Implicuitque Animas
by Lady Silverbird
Summary: A strange anomaly transports the team into an alternate universe where they meet their opposite selves and see what their lives would've been like if things had turned out different as they struggle to find their way back home.
1. Prologue

**A/N: I'm not sure why, but the idea of alternate universes has always just intrigued me. I suppose I find it kind of fascinating, how one decision can have a ripple effect that changes how the whole thing turns out. So, I decided that it had to be written. Well...I didn't decide. The fandom tied me to a chair and said 'type it or we throw you through the anomaly'... Needless to say, ****I chose Door A. I promise I'm not that crazy. I'm only this crazy. That? Ha, that is all them.**

* * *

The team knew the moment that they stepped out of the Hilux that this was not a normal anomaly. A "normal anomaly" was a bit of a oxymoron, but they knew that this one was different from the others. An anomaly usually looked like a tiny sun, a shimmering orb of gold-white light surrounded by a rotating cloud of what looked like broken glass yet had no substance to it. The 'glass' surrounding this one was sparking and glinting as they whirled abnormally fast. Thin cords of lightning darted throughout it, and its colour was not the usual soft golden/ivory; nope, this anomaly glowed in hues of rose and pale violet, bathing them all in surreal light. "Well that is certainly new," said Cutter as he approached the temporal gateway, his boots sinking slightly into the rain-soft ground with each step. "Connor?"

The student was holding his old, slightly tarnished compass in one gloved hand, tipping his fedora back to scratch his head. "It's an anomaly, all right, but I never seen one that colour before, Prof." Both men hopped back a step as a particularly bright tongue of lightning crackled from the anomaly. "Or seen one do _that_ either. What do you think's wrong with it?"

Cutter took a slow step forward, intrigued by this odd anomaly but cautious about approaching; of course it did help that Jenny Lewis stood a step behind him, keeping a firm hold on his jacket and shirt collar with one manicured hand. "I wonder what causes the lightning. Perhaps some form of electrical discharge caused by the rapid shifting of the magnetic field? Hm..." he murmured to himself.

Jenny kept her hand secure on his collar as she instructed the Special Forces team to set a perimeter around the site and keep a sharp eye out for any creature activity or witnesses. As the soldiers moved off to obey, she gave Cutter's shirt a tug, forcing him to back up a step. "Don't get too close to it. I'd rather not have to do a stack of paperwork because you got electrocuted by a purple anomaly," she said firmly, but there was a faint note of concern in her voice. She didn't like how the professor seemed to attract dangerous situations simply by breathing in the vicinity of an anomaly, and she had no intention of attending a funeral anytime soon.

"Yeah..." Cutter's gaze remained fastened on the anomaly, almost longingly, like he was aching to just dive headfirst through and into the arms—or teeth—of whatever waited on the other side.

Stephen was walking around with slow, measured steps, bent at the waist as he studied the ground. "I'm not seeing any kind of tracks, Cutter. I really don't think anything's come through, unless it can fly," he announced and straightened up.

Abby took a step forward, standing at the tracker's elbow like a pale blond wraith. "It's such a pretty colour. I wonder what makes it look like that," she said quietly, watching the red-violet light shimmer and dance. The soft illumination made her near-white hair appear the same colour of the anomaly, and her eyes looked so blue they were nearly purple, much like Stephen's. Nobody else seemed to notice it, but that same flicker of longing passed through their eyes, much like Cutter, as if they wanted nothing more than to run through the temporal gateway to see what was on the other side. Even Jenny felt this strange sort of allure, a pull in her chest that seemed to whisper _just walk through. Just three steps, and you're on the other side. Three little steps is all..._. She shook her head as if to physically dislodge such thoughts. After what'd happened with the Silurian anomaly, she never wanted to see another team member step through an anomaly.

"I think it's closing, Prof," said Connor, and they all turned to look. The anomaly was starting to spin faster, lightning sparking off it faster as it pulsated. And all of them, inwardly, felt a surge of that painful longing once more, like it was begging them to come with before it closed. The gate began to close, but instead of collapsing in on itself and disappearing, the anomaly seemed to explode outwards in a huge flash of blinding white light. When the soldiers blinked the stars from their eyes, rubbing vigorously at their faces to clear their sight. The anomaly was gone.

So were the five core members of the team.


	2. Awakening

Jenny came to with a splitting headache, sharp, throbbing pain just behind her eyes pulsating with every beat of her heart. It almost felt as if someone had put the business end of a screwdriver to her temple and was now hammering it into her skull. She was lying on something cold, hard, and very uncomfortable, sore and aching all over the place. She also knew without opening her eyes that she was no longer in New Forest and was back in the city. She could hear car horns, rumbling engines, and people's voices. She could smell asphalt, rubber, car exhaust, grease from street vendors, and countless other scents that all blended together to form an odour that was simply defined as London. There was also a rather unpleasant scent in the air as well, one that made her nose wrinkle up in disgust. With a superhuman effort, she got her eyes open to see a strip of painfully blue sky between the sharp, clear-cut edges of buildings overhead. She turned her head and scowled as she saw trashbins less than two metres away, no doubt the scent of the horrible smell. And she could feel her hand wrapped around something soft-rough and warm, and she craned her neck around to see. Cutter lay beside her, her hand still gripping the collar of his shirt and coat in an iron grip. "Cutter," she said; her voice came out rough and throaty, like she'd been gargling sand. She swallowed hard and tried again. "Cutter!"

He stirred faintly and gave a soft groan. "Let me 'lone," he mumbled thickly.

Rolling her eyes, she released his jacket collar and swatted his shoulder. "Wake up, damn it!"

His lashes came apart, then closed just as quickly at the bright glare of sunlight. "Christ, what the hell happened?"

She winced as she sat up, her joints popping and muscles aching. God, it felt as if she'd slept in a tumble dryer overnight. "No idea, but we aren't in New Forest. How the hell did we end up here?" Jenny mused as she looked around. They were in an alleyway, just a few feet from the sidewalk, and she was grateful for the fact they hadn't somehow ended up in some prehistoric epoch surrounded by deadly creatures.

"Haven't the foggiest." Cutter stood up, rolled his shoulders, and offered her one hand, pulling her to her feet. "Where are the others?"

_The others._ She'd entirely forgotten, but when she looked around, she didn't see Connor, Abby, or Stephen anywhere, nor did she see any of the soldiers. "I dunno. I'm calling Lester," she said, taking out her mobile, but a small frown crossed her face. "It's not working. Why's it not—? It was fine this morning." She pressed the buttons, but the mobile seemed well and truly broken.

Cutter checked his own mobile and frowned. "Hm, mine isn't working either. Perhaps the anomaly's electromagnetic field fried them when it, erm...exploded," he said, fumbling for a proper word to describe what'd happened in the forest. "Well, we aren't going to accomplish much by standing here. C'mon." He placed a hand on her arm, drawing her out of the alley onto the sidewalk. After casting a fast glance around, he walked over to a nearby stand. "Well, it's still April 25th, still 2007, so at least we didn't travel anywhere else," he said quietly. "Come on, we'll hail a cab, head back to the ARC."

Jenny nodded, but she couldn't shake the feeling of something being wrong. She didn't know what it was yet, but the feeling was still there. It was a faint, uneasy sensation in the pit of her stomach, inherent knowledge that something was just...not _right._ It was almost like the feeling one had when not sure if the front door was locked, or if the stove was off, but much worse. She couldn't get rid of it. As he flagged down a taxi, she slipped her hand into his own, curling her fingers around his own; somehow, the contact helped to ease the _wrong_ feeling in her gut.

The professor glanced down at their joined hands, but he didn't say anything, squeezing her fingers lightly.

* * *

Detective Inspector Lilian Forsythe looked up from her newest case file as the door of her office swung open, but instead of DC Beckett or McKeown, she was greeted with the sight of her son. "Thomas, what are you doing here?" she asked, hastily closing the file before he could see any of the more gruesome crime scene photographs. "Why aren't you home?" she asked; any other parent would have asked why their 17-year-old wasn't in school at this time of day, but Thomas Forsythe didn't attend secondary school; he was already taking college classes, which had let out by now.

"Something is _wrong,"_ he whispered in a conspiratorial manner, shutting the door to her office as if scared they'd be overheard.

Lilian frowned. "What do you mean 'wrong', love?" Wringing his thin, gloved hands, Thomas shuffled around the small room, murmuring inaudibly and shaking his head without answering. She pushed to her feet, walked around the desk, and grasped his shoulders with careful hands, lightly pressing her thumbs into the hollows of his collarbone. "Come now, Tom-tom," she said, using her nickname for him, "calm down, tell me what's wrong. What bothered you? Is there something wrong at home?" She had to calm him down before he ended up having a panic attack here in the middle of the Yard. Thomas's autism had always set him apart from other people, but there were times that she truly believed he had some kind of clairvoyance. He often liked to help on cases—when she allowed it—and he was utterly brilliant. But, at the same time, it was his autism that made him so sensitive and excitable.

He took a deep breath, then another, and she could feel his pulse rate lowering. "That's a good lad. Now tell me what's wrong," she coaxed.

"At St. James' Park," he murmured, his eyes still slightly unfocused. "There is something out of its proper place. It must be returned."

"What does that mean?"

His hand came up, lightly trailing the backs of his fingers down her hair. She and Thomas had the same hair, thick and dark with a tendency to curl at the ends, just as they had the same sloe-black eyes. He'd not inherited much from his father, except for his lily-white complexion, a contrast to her darker olive toned skin. "We must go," he said softly. "St. James' Park. Thalia told me so."

Lilian paused then, her throat briefly going tight. "Did she? Well, then, come on. Let's go." As she picked up her keys, she used her other hand to fasten her badge on her belt. "Am I going to need backup?" she asked. She had four other detectives under her command: Damien Beckett, Jez McKeown, Owen Howard, and Nikki Reynholm. They were all good and loyal coppers, ones she trusted with her life.

Thomas paused, tilting his head to one side as if listening to a voice only he could hear. "Bring Damien. The others are annoying," he decided at last; she muffled a snicker at the casual way he said it. He called every one of her detectives annoying at least thrice in a week, but he never meant it, and they all knew it.

"Right then. Let's go."

* * *

**A/N: There's that chapter down, at long last. So, the team's woken up in the AU, they just don't know it yet. And to avoid confusion, everyone in the AU has different names than the people in the Primeval-verse. Let's see if you can match everyone up. Also, I'm sorry it took me forever to get this done, but I was suffering from the Block of Writer's and I had another multi-chapter fic that needed my attention. I'm still working on the other fic, so I probably won't be able to update regularly. Sorry!**


	3. Confusion

Stephen came to with his stomach in knots, his mouth dry, and his head pounding; it almost felt as if he'd spent a whole night doing some heavy drinking, and now he was waking up to the mother of all hangovers. He tried to sit up, but his muscles screamed in violent protest to any movement. He lay back against the grassy ground with a soft moan, slowly managing to pry open his aching eyes. The stark steely grey of clouds overhead made his headache worse, and he let his lashes fall closed, turning his head aside. He didn't need his eyes to tell him he was back in the city: he could hear cars and horns and faint sirens and people talking, all the general sounds of the city. With a great effort, he turned over on his side and started to push himself up, trembling with fatigue. On hands and knees, he managed to lift his head enough to see Abby lying nearby, stirring slightly on the grass as she groaned. He looked around, trying to recognise where he was, but his mind felt too thick and foggy to manage the simple task.

_What in the hell happened?_ Last thing he remembered, they were all in New Forest looking at the weirdest anomaly they'd ever seen—it'd been purple and full of lightning—and then there was absolutely nothing. He had the vague impression of an explosion and blinding light before unconsciousness blanked his memory, but that might've just been his imagination. Now how did he end up going from New Forest to a park in the middle of London? And where the hell was everyone else? He didn't see Cutter or Jenny or Connor, nor did he see a single black-clad soldier. _Oh...not good._ He crawled over to where Abby was starting to rise, gently shaking her by the shoulder. "Abby." Ugh, his voice sounded like sandpaper and nails. "Abby, wake up."

The tiny blond shifted slightly, lifting her head. "Ow. What in the name of God...?" she moaned, rubbing at her eyes and squinting. "What happened?"

"No idea. You alright?"

"Feel like I got a hangover, but yeah, I'm not hurt."

Stephen got to his feet, somewhat unsteadily, and helped Abby up. They stood in the midst of a park, but there wasn't anyone nearby. The murderous headache was starting to fade away, and his nausea was easing off as well. As he looked around for any sign of the team, Stephen saw two cars pull up to the kerb. Two people got out and started walking straight towards them. For a half-second, he nearly thought it was Lester, sending some lackey to come fetch them, but then dread fell in his gut like a ten-tonne weight. "Abby," he said, reaching out to grasp her arm.

"Oh, of course," the lizard girl murmured.

Helen was approaching them with a strange man on her heels. Stephen felt a small frown come to his face as he took in the woman's ensemble. She wasn't wearing that ripped green jumpsuit and old knapsack. She wore jeans and a green blouse, and her hair was much longer than it had been, curling past her shoulders and midway down her back. "My God, Talbot, I didn't think you actually came out during the daytime," she said, arms folded across her chest as she stared at Stephen with a strange expression that was partly irritation and partly exasperation. "What are you doing out here? Hustling schoolgirls out of their lunch money?"

He felt this odd compulsion to glance over his shoulder and see who she was talking to. "What are you playing at?" he asked. "Are you talking to me?"

She didn't seem very pleased by his answer, and the scowl on her face deepened. She gave a sigh, but it sounded strange, partly exasperation and partly irritation, surely nothing he'd expected from her. She looked to the man at her side, a tall, wide-shouldered bloke with a shock of very ginger hair; he'd been looking at Stephen with that same mix of irritation and exasperation, though his gaze also bore a healthy dose of, well, _disgust._ Stephen had never seen the bloke before in his life. The man took a step forward. "It's up to you, mate. Either get in the car nice and calm, or I'll shove you in there myself," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the cars behind him.

"Wait a minute, what the bloody hell is going on here?" Abby demanded at last. "Who the hell are you, and why would we go anywhere with you at all?"

The man arched one eyebrow in her direction. "Don't make me arrest you too, Tinker Bell," he said, placing both hands on his hips; the motion pushed open his jacket slightly, revealing to them the silver handcuffs on his belt beside a NSY badge.

"Too? Hang about, what am _I_ being arrested for? Helen, what the hell have you done?" Stephen demanded, flicking his gaze to her once more.

She frowned. "Helen? Why are you calling me Helen?"

"Because that is your _name,"_ answered Abby before he could open his mouth. "You're Helen Cutter, the biggest evil bitch to ever live!" The tiny blond looked enraged, her hands clenched and eyes blazing. She felt like roadkill, the team was nowhere in sight, now Helen and some lackey were threatening to arrest them; she liked to think she was a patient woman, but everyone had a line.

The man looked astounded, and Helen—though Stephen was getting a nagging feeling that it _wasn't_ her—looked both shocked and offended at the same time. "Right then. Beckett, cuff Talbot. You are now both under arrest," she said briskly striding forward, reaching for her belt.

The tracker felt a stone drop into his gut when he saw Helen reach down and take a pair of handcuffs off her belt, right where they rested beside a police badge. He couldn't even speak as the ginger man, Beckett, pulled both hands behind his back and cuffed his wrists together. As they approached the two cars—cop cars, he realised now, he saw another familiar face peering from the front seat of one, watching them with a small smile on his face. "Connor? What in the bloody hell is going on?" he called out.

The young man grinned.


	4. Interrogation

Abby felt as if she'd just fallen into her own personal episode of _The Twilight Zone. _Everything was just...wrong. Her head was starting to hurt, and it wasn't from the magical exploding anomaly, either. She had been arrested by Helen Cutter—who didn't seem to actually be Helen Cutter, as insane as it sounded—and apparently, Connor was in league with her. God, what was happening to her life? She bowed her head forward and pressed her forehead against her hands, eyes tight closed. "This is insane," she said quietly.

"Tell me about it," said Stephen from beside her. "What the hell is happening? Did you see her face when we called her Helen? She kept staring at us like we were crazy, like she'd never heard it before. And she didn't even seem to _recognise_ you at all." The tracker shook his head. He started to run a hand back through his hair and sighed as it pulled on his handcuffs. They were both cuffed to chairs in an otherwise empty interrogation room, not entirely sure of what was going on or what they were going to do next. The ginger bloke that'd brought them in—wasn't his name Beckett?—had confiscated their mobiles, keys, and wallets, so it wasn't as if they could call anybody for help. Abby felt like screaming in frustration.

The door opened, and they both looked up. The not-Helen woman walked in, pulling out the chair across from theirs and sitting down. She had a file under one arm, and she set it on the table beside her elbow. "So, which one of you would like to begin?" she asked coolly. Her gaze went to Stephen first. "Talbot?"

"Why do you keep calling me that? My name is Stephen, Stephen Hart. You know that, Helen," he answered.

"Okay, first of all, my name is Lilian Forsythe, but you can just call me Detective Inspector."

Abby clenched her fists. "What did you do to Connor?" she hissed through her teeth. If this harpy had so much as _touched_ her flatmate, there was going to be serious hell to pay.

'Lilian' glanced towards the blond woman, one eyebrow lifting. There was no flicker of recognition in her eyes, nothing in her expression to indicate that she even knew who Abby was. "Who?" she asked, sounding entirely clueless.

"Connor! You had him in your car! What did you do to him?" Abby nearly shouted, wishing that she wasn't handcuffed so she could strangle this infuriating woman.

"His name isn't Connor. That was Thomas, my son," answered the other woman.

Stephen and Abby both simply stared at her, not entirely sure if either could believe what they'd just heard. It was the tracker who recovered first. "Your what?" he asked at last.

* * *

Lilian was starting to wonder if heroin had rotted Talbot's brain the rest of the way, if maybe he'd shot up one too many times.. He'd been arrested so many times he knew every one of her detectives by name, yet he called her 'Helen' and claimed not to know who her son was, called him 'Connor'? This was getting ridiculous. But at the same time, there was just something...off about him. The man in front of her had the same face as Niles Talbot, but he was different. His hair was much darker, his clothes didn't look as if they'd been pulled from a trashbin, and he didn't have that unhealthy, sickly look of an addict about him. He looked more like an athlete, the kind of bloke that women pined for. And the blond...Lilian had never seen the petite little woman in her entire life, yet Tinker Bell had shouted at her with unmistakable hatred and called her an evil bitch. What in the world was going on here? She had already run both their IDs through the database, but there was no record of anyone named Abigail Maitland or Stephen Hart anywhere, which meant they were aliases...but why did they keep calling her 'Helen'? She _hated_ that name. Part of her wondered if Thomas knew what they were playing at; she would have to ask him later.

"Thomas. My son," she repeated. The look of shock on both their faces would have been utterly hilarious in any other situation. "Are you really saying that you don't know who I am? That you don't know who Thomas is?"

The duo hastily shook their heads.

She leant back in her chair to study them both. There was absolutely nothing to suggest a lie. After almost ten years as a copper, she had fine-tuned her own ability to read into body language, to track certain responses—or the lack of—to catch suspects in a lie. Usually it was something small, like a tell in a poker match. A twitch of the fingers, a tense of the shouders, a hundred different little signs that practically screamed out _liar, liar, pants on fire._ But neither one of them seemed to be lying. That meant one of two things: either A) they were incredibly good liars or B) they were telling the truth. They didn't know who she was, or who her son was, except by that horrid name they kept calling her.

Lilian folded both arms over her stomach. "Alright. I'm listening. Explain."

* * *

"This is..impossible," whispered Jenny.

She and Cutter stood in front of the ARC...or rather, what was _supposed_ to be the ARC. Instead of the bleeding-edge government facility, a tall, imposing building that seemed to be made entirely out of windows with its guarded front gate and security detail of black-clad SAS forces, there was just a half-finished construct in the middle of a construction site. Deserted tools and pipe lay all around, sheets of black tarp fluttering in the chilled wind. A thick grey overcast had blotted out the sun, providing a decidedly gloomy feel to the abandoned site. There were no cars, no soldiers, no scientists. Just them and a few pigeons roosting in the building's shell. Jenny glanced over at the professor; his face was set into an unreadable, stony expression. "Nick?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know," he replied. "I don't. The only explanation I have...is that the anomaly, it somehow sent us to an alternate timeline, a timeline where the ARC doesn't exist and—" His voice abruptly cut off, and a flicker of hope crossed his expression. "Claudia Brown," he murmured softly.

Jenny's gaze snapped up to him, about to shout at him for calling her by the wrong damn name _again_, but he spoke before she had the chance. "We may be back in Claudia Brown's timeline," he said. "Come on, we need to get to the Home Office."


	5. Lost

"Nick, are you sure this is a good idea?" Jenny murmured softly. "If you go in there and ask about a woman that might not exist, they're going to think you're crackers."

"I'll be fine," he answered, though his tone was somewhat vague, as if he wasn't really listening to her at all.

She wanted to say more but held her tongue, folding both arms and leaning back into the seat, aware that she probably looked like a petulant child. A part of her was actually hoping that when they got to the Home Office, there would be no trace of anyone named Claudia Brown. She was terrified, actually. Because if 'Claudia' did exist, then she would be living, breathing proof that Cutter wasn't off his rocker at all, that there really was a change in the timeline...and that Jenny really was some reincarnation of the woman he had lost. And as scared as she was, she was also, insanely enough, jealous. It seemed that every time she thought she might be getting closer to him, that maybe there could be something there other than just the typical coworker relationship, Claudia Brown would somehow manage to get between them, renewing that dread that Cutter didn't like her for any other reason other than the physical resemblance. It was utterly maddening.

Cutter couldn't help but to notice the sudden silence beside him, and he glanced over at Jenny. To his surprise, she looked quite put out, arms folded, staring out the window. For a moment, he wondered what was the matter with her, and then realisation came up and struck him across the face. _Oh, you stupid git,_ he scolded himself. She had always upset at the mention of Claudia before, and why should now be any different than that? He probably hadn't helped the situation, either, ignoring her entirely. "Jenny," he said quietly, and her gaze only briefly flickered to his face before returning to the window. Yeah, she was upset with him. "Jenny, I'm sorry."

She turned to look at him once more, eyebrows lifting. "For what?"

"For being an insensitive clout," he answered, much to her amusement. The corners of her lips curled up. "I imagine you aren't as...eager to find out about Claudia as I am," he said.

"Understatement."

"And I'm sorry that I was being stupid about it."

Jenny lifted one eyebrow, eyeing him for a moment, then sighed and shook her head. "It's alright. It's just...if she is real...then what does that make me?" she wondered, looking down at her hands.

"It makes you Jenny Lewis," he answered honestly. "Just because you look like her doesn't mean you are any more or any less than yourself."

"Be careful, Nick, your inner wisdom is showing." She couldn't resist but tease him, even now. It was a familiar dance, one they both knew the steps to, accepted and routine. And a bit of normality was comforting in this madhouse situation.

He rolled his eyes, though a smile pulled at his mouth. However, the smiles went away in a heartbeat as the taxi pulled up to the kerb. "We're here," he said quietly.

* * *

Lilian leant back in her chair, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, eyes closed. "Okay. So...just for the sake of clarity, let me recap. You two...are dinosaur wranglers that have accidentally found a way into some kind of...alternate timeline, or some such thing, through a tear in the space-time continuum called 'anomalies,' which is why you thought that Thomas and I were people that we're not, because we're some kind of doppelganger, mirror image to the people in _your_ timeline?" she asked, opening her eyes to look at the two people across from her.

_Wow, it sounds so impossible when you say it like that,_ Stephen thought wryly. "Yes," he said, wondering when they were going to be chucked into the loony bin for this. "And why you thought that I was someone I'm not."

She groaned softly, resting her elbow on the table and pressing her forehead against her hand. "Why...why do I always end up with the crazy ones?" Lilian murmured softly. Stephen no longer thought of her as Helen. The resemblance was un-bloody-canny, but this woman was definitely not his best mate's insane wife. She lacked that almost-predatory air, didn't have the same coldness in her eyes.

All three looked up as the door opened, and Connor—no, _not_ Connor—Thomas walked in. This boy seemed a younger than the geek that Stephen knew. Not a whole lot younger, but still younger. He still wore the strange, eccentric clothing, complete with waistcoat, scarf, and fingerles gloves, but there was a very...peculiar look in his eye, one that Stephen couldn't quite place. He walked over to Lilian and bent until his chin rested on her shoulder; the show of affection appeared strange, but only because the tracker was used to seeing animosity between them. He murmured something in her ear, but neither of them could hear what he'd said. The DI let out a long sigh, eyes closing. "You cannot tell me you really believe this, Tom-tom," she said quietly; he nodded. She groaned. "Fine, fine." Thomas beamed as he straightened up. Lilian rose, walked around the table, and unlocked their handcuffs. "Let me make something perfectly clear. You two are going to stay in sight at all times or I'll have you thrown in the cage," she said, the tone of her voice saying that she expected nothing less than complete obedience. 'The cage' was the temporary lockup in the station where all the lowlifes were tossed until they made bail, their scumbag lawyers arrived, or they were processed. It currently housed a shoplifter with sticky fingers, a drunk that'd had one too many and started a brawl, and a suspected pervert arrested for dropping his trousers in the middle of the Underground. "You said that you think your mates came here with you. Where do we start looking?" she asked, hands on her hips.

"Let's start with the ARC," Abby replied.

* * *

_The universe hates me. It's a fact, I know it is,_ thought Connor as he shivered and trembled in the cold. Of all the bloody places he had to end up, of course he would end up in the middle of a forest, by himself, at night, in the bloody _rain!_ God only knew where the others were, if they were even in the same bloody county. Or time period. He didn't know what'd happened, except that the weird purple anomaly had somehow..._exploded_ was the only real adjective that fit, he blacked out and woke up all by his lonesome in the middle of nowhere. He had no idea where he was, his mobile was fried—no doubt due to the electromagnetic field from the purple anomaly—and he was feeling rather close to despair. No food, no water, nothing. All he had was his tarnished old compass, but fat lot of good _that_ did him seeing as how he didn't even know which direction lead to civilisation.

As he trudged on through the darkness, a branch suddenly decided to shiver and shake off a fresh cascade of cold water onto his head. Connor groaned softly under his breath, shivering as droplets of cold water trickled down the back of his neck. _What did I do to deserve this?_ he thought miserably. Lifting his head, he saw a faint light through the trees ahead, gone as soon as it'd come; the faint sound of tyres on wet pavement reached his ears. _Is that a road? Please, please, tell me that's a road,_ he prayed to whatever deity was listening, willing his aching limbs to move faster, heading in the direction the light had come from.

Abruptly the trees ended, and he was standing in tall grasses. And right in front of him was a road. Connor heaved a sigh of relief. Even if there wasn't a car in sight, at least now he knew which way to go. Roads had to lead somewhere, right? Pulling up his jacket hood, he started walking down the side of the road, keeping a wary eye out for any approaching vehicles.


	6. Mistaken Identities

As they approached the doors of the Home Office, Cutter felt Jenny's nails dig into his wrist just before she yanked him off the sidewalk, forcibly dragging him behind a car parked on the kerb. "Ow, what the hell are you—?" he started to ask, but her hand shot up and covered his mouth.

"Nick, hush!" she hissed quietly, then lowered her hand from his mouth. "Look over there," she murmured, pointing.

He straightened up and peered towards where she pointed. This time, his hand tightened around her wrist, an almost-painful knot settling in his stomach. Across the street, Claudia Brown was getting out of a car. There was no mistaking her, no matter how long it'd been, even with Jenny standing beside him. It really was her. He started to straighten up, walk towards her, but Jenny tightened her grip on his arm and pulled him back. He nearly shook her off, then froze. Another person had gotten out of the car with Claudia, a man, with pale gold-blond hair. Cutter exhaled forcefully as if he'd just been punched in the stomach. Because he was looking at _himself,_ as alike to him as a reflection in a mirror. The other version of him slipped one arm around Claudia Brown's waist, drawing her in close to his side and kissing her temple before they started walking to the Home Office, disappearing through the front doors together.

Once they were gone, Cutter leant up against the car, trying to get his breath back. Jenny lightly put one hand on his arm, and he couldn't find the will to shrug her off. What happened? He didn't...understand how this was even possible. He actually felt a little dizzy, though he wasn't sure whether he wanted to be sick or hit something.

"Nick..." Jenny said softly, trailing off because she wasn't sure what else there was to say. She knew that Cutter had so badly wanted to find Claudia Brown, hoping that there was still some chance they would be able to be together. And he'd found her...only to find that this timeline was a lot different than he first thought, and the woman he cared so much about was quite clearly with someone else. What in the world could Jenny say to _that?_

Before either one of them could think of another word to say, a familiar voice shouted, "Oi, Cutter! Jenny!" They both straightened up, turning to see Abby and Stephen coming towards them with matching expressions of relief on their faces. "You have no idea how glad we are to see you two," Stephen admitted, a bright grin on his face. Then he noticed Cutter's pale face and frowned slightly. "What's wrong?"

_More than you'd think,_ Jenny thought, but then another familiar voice spoke, this one sending a chill down her backbone. "What did I tell you two about running off?" snapped Helen Cutter as she strode down the sidewalk towards them with Connor in tow behind her.

Almost instantly, the professor straightened up slightly, pushing aside his own misery for the moment and instead channelling the emotion into anger towards the harpy-woman that was probably behind this whole mess. "Helen. Why am I not surprised?" Cutter snarled quietly, glaring at his ex-wife.

Instead of firing off some sharp-tongued reply, Helen sighed and shook her head. "That damn name again. I suppose these are the friends you were talking about?" she asked, addressing Stephen and Abby, much to their surprise.

"Yeah." Abby grasped Cutter's arm. "That's not Helen, Professor. We've got some explaining to do."

* * *

Connor was quite sure that he was going to end up with the mother of all colds after spending an entire night out in the cold and rain. He'd somehow managed to appear in the middle of New Forest, it seemed, though how he ended up so far away was entirely beyond him. After sacrificing what little money he had in his wallet to take a bus back to London, he was at sixes and sevens as to what to do next. He didn't know where his friends were, how they'd gotten split up in the first place, or if they were even in the city at all. For all he knew, they could've ended up in Manchester. Still shivering, he dropped down onto a park bench and tried to clear his muddled, sleep-deprived brain. He sneezed, then broke out into a round of coughing. _And it begins,_ he thought miserably.

"Wow, you sound like hell, Tom-Tom," said Abby's voice, nearly startling him out of his skin, and he twisted around. She stood just behind him, leaning her forearms on the back of the bench. But then he blinked twice and realised it...wasn't quite Abby. Her hair was a lot longer and drawn into two short little braids, and she looked a little younger than his spunky flatmate, not to mention she was wearing entirely different clothes than he'd last seen her in and was carrying what looked like his old messenger bag on one shoulder.

"I...what'd you call me?" he asked, tilting his head slightly.

The not-quite-Abby girl smiled and tilted her head in a mimicking position. "Tom-Tom. Your name," she replied. At his blank look, she smirked. "Oh, come off it, kiddo, don't look at me like I'm crazy. It took you long enough to get here. I was starting to think that I'd have to call your mum to make sure you didn't forget."

Connor just gaped at her for a moment, knowing he probably looked like a total git staring with his mouth open, but then he snapped out of it. "Wh-what's your name again?"

She laughed. "It's still Jamie, Tom-Tom, just like it was yesterday and the day before that. Trust me, I have no intention of ever changing it."

Oh...he was in _so_ much trouble...

* * *

**A/N: ah, this took me way too long to write! Apologies to all! I have a muse that likes to run away and leave me in the middle of a fic with no idea what to do next. It's the devil's muse, I swear it is.**


	7. Found

"Okay, Thomas, you're officially starting to freak me out. What's wrong with you?" asked Jamie, now staring at him with concern in her eyes.

"I-I'm _not_ Thomas. My name's Connor, Connor Temple," he replied, shaking his head even as dread pooled in the pit of his stomach like oil. _Oh, God, please tell me Abby hasn't disappeared. Please tell me she's not like Claudia Brown,_ he thought, praying to whatever deity would listen to him. He wasn't sure that he'd be able to live with himself if his Abby had somehow been erased from the timeline.

The younger girl-woman was starting to look uneasy now, eyeing him as if _he_ was somehow the one gone unbalanced in this situation. Well…maybe he was going off his rocker. "What's going on, Tom-Tom?" she asked, once again calling him by the wrong name, her tone going gentler than before.

"I said I'm _not—"_ he started to snap back, but then broke off as another round of harsh coughing shook his frame, rattling painfully in his chest. Connor could barely get a breath in, and when he finally could breathe again, he was lightheaded, leaning on the bench for support and wheezing like an asthmatic.

He felt a soft hand touch his face, brushing back his messy fringe to press against his forehead. "God, you're burning up," said Jamie, worry layering her voice. He wanted to say something, pull away from her, but he started coughing again, gasping for breath. She took his wrist, drew him upright, draped his arm around her shoulders, and slipped her own arm around his waist. "C'mon, you need to get home before you pass out," she said, guiding him over to the street and hailing a cab.

_I need my Abby back,_ Connor thought miserably.

* * *

"Oi, Cutter, where…where's Connor at?" asked Abby, glancing around and noticing the lack of a certain fedora-wearing nerd.

"You don't know?" Cutter's voice was troubled.

"No, we…we thought he'd be with you," Stephen replied, a note of worry coming to his voice. Beside him, the petite blond bit her lower lip, a small frown playing across her face. Stephen felt the same concern; the youngest of the team had somehow been separated from the rest of them, and no doubt Connor was worried out of his mind trying to find the rest of them.

Lilian nodded assent. They were sitting in a diner not far from the Home Office, sitting down in order to explain and try to understand what'd happened. They all agreed that the strange purple anomaly had somehow transported them into another timeline, but none of them had a clue as to how to get back. Sitting near Lilian, Cutter couldn't help but keep looking over at this woman that looked identical to his former wife. Her dark hair was a lot longer, past her shoulders, and she lacked the air of…well, coldness that Helen had. "So… you work for the Yard?" he asked at last.

She nodded, then pushed open her jacket to let him see the badge clipped to her belt beside her handcuffs. "Detective Inspector Lilian Forsythe. This is my son, Thomas," she introduced, gesturing towards Connor's doppelgänger. The young man was sitting on the other side of the table, chattering with Stephen. He was younger than their Connor, his hair longer, and he had a strange look in his eyes, like he wasn't all there.

Cutter couldn't help but chuckle, shaking his head in disbelief.

"What?" she asked, glancing over with eyebrows raised.

"Nothing, nothing, just…you look like my ex-wife, and…she wouldn't even consider having children if you paid her to," he replied. Helen had _never_ once entertained the idea of being a mother, not even when they were married. She wasn't good with children, and she had never wanted any of her own.

Lilian chuckled and shook her head as well. "Well, I'd be a liar if I said that having Thomas was planned, but I'd also be a liar if I said I regret it," she repliedwith a glance back towards her son. She loved her boy, more than she ever loved anyone, and even if the life of a single mother (and police officer) wasn't exactly the easiest, she wouldn't trade it for anything. "From what I've heard from Tinker Bell over there," Lilian said with a small nod towards Abby, "your ex is a real piece of work."

"Oh…you haven't the foggiest idea," he replied.

* * *

Jamie looked over at Thomas as he shivered and coughed, huddled in thick blankets on her bed. She'd barely managed to get him back to her flat before he practically passed out, running a high temperature. What in the world was going on with him? Why did he keep insisting that his name was Connor? She was hoping that it was just delirium from his fever. She dipped a flannel in cool water and draped it across his forehead; he shivered again, curling up tighter under the blankets.

After a small pause, she tugged the blankets away from his face to study him closer. He… he didn't quite _look_ like himself. His hair was a lot shorter, and he had the scruffy beginnings of a beard too, which was entirely unlike him. And he somehow looked older, like he'd aged four or five years in the past two days. It was bizarre, to say the least. Unable to help herself, Jamie pulled the blankets further down. Curled up as he was, it was hard to tell, but she was fairly certain that he was a few inches taller as well. His shoulders and chest had broadened out some, he had put on a bit of weight, and the lines of his face had shifted, matured. He looked like he was in his twenties, not seventeen.

"What's your name?" she asked softly, shaking his shoulder.

"M'Connor Temple," he mumbled.

Jamie leant back, staring at him hard. Something was seriously wonky here.

* * *

**A/N: a small bit of filler until I finish the next chapter. Coming soon: the team is finally reunited!**


	8. Reunited

Abby felt unease curling in the pit of her belly as she half-heartedly prodded at her lunch. Where was her Connor? She'd shown up with Stephen, but that was because they'd been standing next to each other when the weird purple anomaly exploded, and Jenny stayed with Cutter because she'd held onto his jacket. But Connor could end up on the other side of London, and he'd be all by himself. She bit her lip. _He's probably freaking out, wondering if we're dead or stuck in another time period,_ she thought mournfully. She wondered if he'd try to go back to the ARC (or what was supposed to be the ARC) or if he'd go back to their flat. And for all she knew, their flat could be an office building. She glanced down at her ruined mobile miserably. She couldn't even call to find out if he was okay.

A slight nudge drew her out of her misery, and she lifted her head. Jenny sat beside her, looking at her concernedly. "You alright? You're looking pretty upset over there," said the dark-haired woman.

Poking disinterestedly at her lunch, Abby gave a soft sigh. "I'm worried about Connor. God only knows where he ended up, and he's all by himself, too," she answered.

"Oh." Jenny tucked a stray curl of dark hair behind one ear, frowning for a moment before she began speaking again. "Well, I'm sure that he'll be okay, Abby. He's a smart bloke, he'll find us."

_"How,_ Jenny?" Abby implored, her frustration boiling over. "We're not in our right timeline. Everything is wrong, at least for us. For all we know, Connor could've ended up on the other side of the city with no way home. Our flat doesn't exist here, the ARC was never built, and he's got no other way to contact us. He's one person in the largest city in England. So tell me, _how _exactly is he going to find us?"

For a few seconds, nobody spoke, unsure of how to answer the blond's question without somehow inciting her anger once more. When no reply came, Abby groaned and dropped her head to the tabletop, burying her head in both arms. But then Thomas scooted closer to her, lightly brushed her short blond hair back, and bent his head so his lips were just near her ear, murmuring something so quiet that the others couldn't make out what he'd said; after a small pause, Abby tilted her head to the side, peeking up at the young boy. He offered her the crooked, dimpled smile that she adored so much, and with a sigh, she sat back up. Her gaze drifted to the window of the diner, and all at once, she went rigid, eyes widening.

"Abby?" asked Stephen.

The snake-girl didn't answer, but a blinding smile crossed her lips. Without even asking the others to move, she slid under the table, crawled out from beneath the table, stood up, and ran out the diner. Baffled, the others all turned towards the window as she sprinted across the street and practically jumped onto—

"Bloody hell, that's Connor!"

Thomas smirked. "Told her so."

* * *

"Wait a minute. Look, you can't be out like this, you're sick," Jamie insisted, pulling on his arm.

However, she was not nearly as strong as his Abby, and Connor kept walking. Never mind that he felt like something scraped off the bottom of a shoe or that he had this persistent cough that wouldn't go away. He didn't know how he'd ended up in this place, this...alternate timeline or whatever it was, but he was for damn sure going to find a way back home. After he'd blacked out, he had woken up in an unfamiliar flat and instantly resolved to find his way home. Jamie, who was still definitely _not_ his Abby, persistently followed after him, and she was starting to get on his nerves. "Look, why don't you go away?" he growled.

"Like hell," the small girl-woman replied. Apparently, some things never changed, her feisty attitude included. "Tom—" He glared at her, and she changed her words. "Connor," Jamie said, though it was clear she was uncomfortable calling him that, "less than an hour ago you passed out on your feet, and you're running a serious temperature. You need to lay down and relax."

"What I need to do is go home," he shot back, whirling on heel to face her. Not expecting his sudden halt, Jamie ran right into his chest, then skittered back a quick step. "Look, I dunno who you think I am, but I do not belong here. My friends are missing, and for all I know, they could be dead or worse. You might think you know me, and maybe you did once, but I am not that person," he spat. He didn't like being so harsh on the girl, but he was in a positively foul mood, ached for his own Abby, and wanted nothing more than to go back to the flat and watch _Doctor Who_ with Rex fluttering around his head.

Jamie looked hurt, wrapping both arms around herself as she took a half-step backwards, putting more space between their bodies. For a moment, he actually felt quite bad for hurting her feelings, but his own bad mood outweighed his brief regret. "Okay," she said quietly. "Can...could I at least help you?"

Groaning quietly, Connor rubbed at his weary eyes with one hand. "I really don't think that'd be a good idea. Why don't you just go home and—?"

"Connor!"

He nearly startled out of his skin at the familiar voice shouting his name, even though Jamie hadn't spoken. A wild surge of hope swelled almost painfully in his chest, and he turned towards the sound of the voice. "Abby!"


	9. Complication

Connor saw her running towards him—white-blond pixie cut, punkette clothing, and blinding grin—and he automatically held out his arms. She all but tackled him to the ground, making him stagger a few steps. Abby, his wonderful, glorious, marvellous Abby, was hugging him so tight he thought she might break his ribs, but he didn't really feel the pain. He wrapped both arms around her and pressed his nose into the top of her hair, breathing in the familiar smell of her, and for a few heartbeats, everything was okay in his world. She was speaking, too, her words running together in their haste to be spoken. "I thought you were gonna be lost," she said breathlessly, voice muffled by his chest. "I didn't think that I could find you again. God, I'm so happy to see you."

He started to smile, but then that damn cough got to him again, making him turn his head away from her, trying to muffle the sound in his sleeve. Instantly, Abby leant back and eyed him critically, concern written across her elfin features. "What's the matter with you?"

"Who the hell are you?" asked a slightly squeakier echo of her own voice, and Abby turned her head to see, well, herself. Jamie was still standing on the sidewalk, gaping at them with wide eyes and mouth open.

Before either of them could think up an answer, the rest of the team along with Thomas and Lilian crossed the street to join them. Connor didn't think he could ever be so happy to see the rest of his teammates. A small part of him that'd been wound tight with fear suddenly relaxed. He'd found his friends; things weren't quite so bad after all. But then his gaze drifted over to the other two people accompanying them, and he went cold, grasping Abby tightly. "Helen," he rasped, also noticing that he was looking at a slightly-younger version of himself as well.

"Not Helen," Stephen corrected. Connor looked at him in puzzlement, but the tracker only waved a hand. "Long story. Good to have you back, mate."

"I-I don't—what's going on here?" Jamie asked in a weak voice. Thomas had almost instantly drifted over to her side, and her wide eyes were flicking from him to Connor, then over to Abby and back again. "Please, someone explain what's this all about. Tom-Tom, why do they look like us?"

Connor opened his mouth to ask for an explanation as well, but a harsh, racking cough shook his shoulders, making his chest ache. He had to lean against the nearest building so he didn't fall over, gasping for a breath. His head was swimming dizzily now, and he couldn't quite see straight, either. Instantly, Abby was at his side, her soft hands reaching up to touch his forehead. "Oh God, Conn, you're burning up," she said, biting her lip; he couldn't quite speak yet, only leant his head against her hand.

The apparently not-Helen woman stepped forward. "My house isn't too far from here. We'll go there and get this all sorted out."

"Think you can walk, Conn?" Abby asked gently, her arm sliding around his waist, both in comfort and support. He managed to nod and put his own arm around her shoulders.

As they started walking, Lilian stepped up beside Thomas and put a hand on his shoulder. "So, who's your girlfriend?" she asked with a smile.

Jamie flushed, and Thomas's ears went red. "She's not m'girlfriend," he mumbled back.

"Oh, so I was wrong? She's not a girl?"

_"Mum!"_

* * *

Abby gently smoothed one hand over Connor's unkempt black hair, brushing it back out of his face. He was positively burning with fever, shivering even as he sweated like a sinner in church. Apparently, he had somehow ended up all the way in New Forest last night, caught in the rain and cold for hours on end, which resulted in his illness. She rearranged the blankets a little more comfortably over him, dipped a flannel into the bowl of ice water beside her, and laid the cold cloth over his forehead; he shivered at the cold touch without waking, curling up tighter beneath the covers.

Once they'd all returned to Lilian's house, Cutter had explained their entire bizarre situation to Connor and to Abby's lookalike. Her name was Jamie Shaw, a college student and classmate of Thomas's. According to a very fervent Thomas, they were only friends, but Lilian just laughed, "Sure you are," which in turn made them all laugh at how embarrassed the young man was.

Now the rest of the team was trying to figure out how the hell they were going to get home whilst Jamie sat with Lilian and Thomas, still looking a bit starstruck by it all. And Abby was playing nursemaid to her sick flatmate. As relieved as she was to have him back, she hated to see him so miserable; she slid one hand into his own, and he clutched her fingers tightly. A light touch on her shoulder made her look up.

"How's he doing?" Jenny asked quietly.

Abby smoothed her hand across Connor's hair again, never mind that it was sweaty and in need of a wash. "His fever's gone down some," she replied, then turned her gaze up to the dark-haired woman. "How are you holding up? When we found you, you and Cutter both looked a little...off." A little off was being nice about it. When they'd met up, the professor looked like someone had just punched him in the stomach, and Jenny had gone all pale and uneasy-looking, like she might be sick.

"That's a bit more complicated," Jenny said enigmatically, brushing her hair behind one ear. "I... Cutter and I...it's definitely a bit more complicated." She wished that she could talk to Abby about Claudia Brown, but she knew it'd only set off the professor's shortened temper.

The petite blond lifted one eyebrow in silent question. "You say this as if things were _simple_ before."

For the first time that day, Jenny laughed. "Fair enough."


	10. Magnets

It was after midnight, but Cutter couldn't sleep. He kept thinking about seeing Claudia Brown, seeing the woman he so greatly liked and may have loved, with someone else. Another man that looked exactly like him. It was confusing, baffling. Infuriating, almost, because he didn't know what to _do_ now. He leant back into the overstuffed chair in front of the fireplace, staring at the low-burning flames that licked along the charred firewood. The others were asleep, though. Connor was still on the couch with head and shoulders in Abby's lap; Stephen was stretched out on the floor; Jenny was curled up on the settee. Jamie was asleep in the spare room because she was the youngest of the lot and because Thomas had refused to argue on the point.

"Can't sleep?" asked a soft voice, nearly making him leap out of the chair in surprise.

"Jesus Christ, boy, don't do that," he hissed, turning in his chair to see young Thomas lingering nearby, staring at him with dark eyes reflecting the firelight like polished obsidian. "Don't you sleep?"

"Do you?" The teen silently padded over on bare feet, easing around the sleeping form of Stephen to stand beside the armchair, peering into the fire as if it somehow held the secrets of the universe. He looked over at Cutter, tilting his head to the side like a puzzled dog or bird. "What's bothering you so much?"

"Nothing."

"Liar."

Cutter's hands tightened on the arms of the chair, eyes narrowed at the young man, but Thomas didn't blink or look away. He huffed in irritation. "Look, I…it isn't easy to explain," he said at last, not wanting to talk about this. He was much more content with just sitting here and stewing on his thoughts in silence, but that didn't mean the kid was content with that answer. Thomas scooted closer and looked at him expectantly. Finally, Cutter started talking, and once he got started, he found that he couldn't quite stop talking either, everything about Claudia Brown and Jenny Lewis and the events of the day spilling out of his mouth until he'd vented everything. With a deep breath, he finally slumped back in the armchair.

Thomas was just staring at him silently, not moving, not speaking, and Cutter shifted slightly in the chair, uncomfortable with the intensity of the boy's stare. It seemed that the young Forsythe didn't need to blink as often as normal people, and the peculiar look in his eyes was unnerving. "Magnets," he said at last, and Cutter frowned in confusion. "Professor, some people in the world are like magnets. They're drawn to each other, one invariably seeking the other out, to one another; north pole to south pole, magnet to metal. No matter the setting or the circumstance, magnets are always going to be attracted to each other. When you vanished from the timeline, it repaired on its own, adjusting and rewriting its own history to fix itself. It remade Connor into me and remade Abby into Jamie, but even as different people, we still ended up together, much as they have." He nodded towards the sleeping forms of Abby and Connor on the couch; the blond had one hand on Connor's dark hair, the other resting on his chest, slowly rising and falling with his breathing. "Stephen was rewritten as Talbot and Helen as my mum, their lives still entwined with the rest of ours. And Jenny Lewis and Nick Cutter have been rewritten as Claudia Brown and Alex Berenson."

Cutter's head snapped up. "Y-you know him?" he asked, stunned to hear the young man give his lookalike a name.

Thomas gave him a small, amazingly knowing smile. "Yes. Alex is Jamie's uncle. Do you see, Professor? You are magnets. You and your people are drawn to each other. You are always connected. Look at us," he said. "We are not time-travellers or dinosaur-wranglers. It's just us. College students, a police officer, a drug addict, government workers. Normal. But we are still combined as one, linked to one another even indirectly. You and Claudia…the timeline has been rewritten so that what you had is gone and will never be again. I'm sorry. But that does not mean that you are not without hope. Your other magnet is still here." Thomas's dark gaze flicked sideways.

Cutter turned slightly in his chair to see what the young man was looking to: Jenny, asleep on the settee. Something in him softened at the sight of her, looking so peaceful, so at ease. And he felt an odd urge to reach out and pass a hand over her dark hair, see how soft it felt, and his hand twitched slightly. "I can't," he whispered raggedly. "She thinks I only care about her because she looks like Claudia Brown."

Thomas Forsythe's voice was as low and soft as velvet rubbed the wrong way. "Do you?"

"No," he murmured. "I-I did once, but now…I know she isn't Claudia. She's Jenny. She's herself, an entirely different woman, and—" Cutter paused, his breath hitching slightly. He swallowed hard and continued in a hushed voice. "I love her for it, but I don't want to lose her."

Thomas tilted his head slightly. "How do you know you'd lose her?"

"She hates me."

"Does she?"

Cutter was starting to get pissed with the constant questioning of every word he said, but at the same time, he kept looking at Jenny, reevaluating. These past several weeks, even before this happened, she had started becoming more...not truly affectionate, but warmer, friendlier. She'd smile and laugh more around him, and occasionally, when she thought he didn't notice, she would look at him with this softness in her eyes. "I don't know."

For several long minutes, there was nothing but the sound of the fire's faint crackling and the soft breathing of the other people in the room. "You are a protector," said the boy suddenly.

"What?" Cutter repeated oh-so-brilliantly.

"You. You're a protector. You've got true balance that draws others to you. You look out for those that look up to you. You are their shelter," the young man replied with a small nod. "That gives you wisdom, but Professor, you are not always the wisest. Goodnight." Thomas stood up and disappeared up the stairs, leaving Cutter sitting in the chair by himself.

* * *

**A/N: I didn't really mean to take an entire chapter for this conversation, but let's face it, Cutter seriously needed someone to talk some sense into him (thick git).**


	11. Minefield

"So, how exactly do you lot plan on getting home?" asked Lilian. The woman copper looked far too awake for only six a.m., already dressed and alert whilst the rest of her temporary houseguests looked like death warmed over, all of them still groggy.

Leaning against the counter, Cutter had to clear the cottonballs from his brain before he remembered how to answer. "Dunno yet. We'll have to find an anomaly, but...it's not going to be easy to do," he replied, rubbing at his eyes with one hand in an effort to wake himself up a little more. 'Not easy' was an understatement. In almost two years of working with the anomalies, he'd only seen one purple anomaly, and even if they _did_ find it, there was no way of knowing whether or not it'd take them back to the proper timeline.

He felt a warm brush against his arm and opened his eyes to see Jenny shuffling past him. For an instant, thoughts of going home were erased from his mind. Thomas's words had stayed with him the entire night, and now he was at sixes and sevens. Where exactly did they go from here? He'd never been good with women—his track record was proof of that. He felt as if he was standing in the midst of a live minefield with no clue where the mines were and was being asked to cross to the other side. One wrong step, and any relationship they could possibly have would be over before it even had a chance to begin.

"We might head back to the Forest of Dean," suggested Stephen, pulling Cutter from his thoughts. "There's a possibility that it could still be there."

"Even if it was, how d'you suggest we find it again?" Cutter queried in return. "It might have moved since then, or closed."

A slurred, drowsy voice emanated from the lump of blankets on the couch. "I could bodge together a handheld detector if I get the parts to it," mumbled Connor groggily. The young man struggled to sit up, grasping the back of the couch for support; Abby was almost instantly at his side, her hand on his back to keep him upright. He looked positively terrible, his voice hoarse from coughing all night, flags of fever-colour still staining his cheeks, hair matted down and sweaty.

"Conn, you're still sick, I really don't think—" the petite blond started to protest.

"M'fine. I just need the right parts for it. I can make it out of some simple stuff," Connor said, overriding her, but he still leant back into her arms, tilting his head back onto her shoulder. His tired eyes shifted back to Stephen and Cutter. "I'll put together a handheld. We can go back to the Forest and see if the anomaly's still there. If not, I…I could probably piece together a temporary ADD."

"ADD?" echoed Lilian with eyebrows lifted.

"Anomaly Detection Device. I put it together. It's kind of like a big satnav," said Connor with a glance towards Jenny, who blushed and looked to her feet, "but I have it fine-tuned to track anomalies as and when they appear, pinpointing their location."

Lilian looked impressed. "And you built it? Well, Tom-Tom's in technology and robotics classes at Uni, so he should be able to help you. And speaking of Uni, you two need to get a move on before you're late," she said, turning to Thomas and Jamie. The two teens skulked, looking dejected to be left out of the plan-making, but then the blond took Thomas by the hand, pulling him towards the door. With a final sullen look, the teens left the house. Lilian smiled once they were gone. "What a cute couple," she said, making the others all smile and chortle. Her mobile began to go off, an eerie ringtone filling the air. "Ah, I hear dead people," she remarked. "Tom-Tom set that ringtone just for when the morgue calls me." She took out the small mobile, checked her texts, then snapped it shut again. "Right, I've got work. Criminals to catch, cases to solve. You lot stay out of trouble, see if you can't build that…detector thing, whatever it is."

They all bid their goodbyes as she left, leaving them alone in the house. "Right, Connor, what kind of parts do you think that you'll need to make a handheld?" asked Cutter, turning to look at the weary student. Though he wanted to let Connor rest for a while, give him a chance to feel better, but the sooner that they got home, the better it'd be for everyone. Cutter himself felt like something scraped from the bottom of a shoe, sore from sleeping in a chair and weary from a lack of proper sleep. He wanted to go home, more than he ever could have thought. He wanted to see the ARC again, sleep in his own bed. Hell, he wouldn't even mind seeing Lester again. Well…that might've been pushing it. "Connor?" he repeated, glancing over at the young man.

Connor nodded and sat up wearily. "Yeah. Let's go."

* * *

"We always miss out on the fun stuff, don't we?" asked Jamie as they made their way across campus towards the building. She hooked her arm through Thomas's, the cool wind blowing at their hair and tugging on their clothes. Seeing the group of strange lookalikes was certainly a novel way to start the week, and she was still reeling a little at how eerily identical they all were. Abby was a bit different from Jamie herself, a little older, but still made the short pixie cut look good as well as the whole punk rockette getup. Connor, like Thomas, was definitely adorkable. Professor Cutter did look just like Uncle Alex, just with slightly longer hair and a more bitter, wounded air about him. She wondered if he would end up with Jenny, the woman that looked like Aunt Claudia.

Suddenly, Thomas came to an abrupt halt, pulling Jamie to a stop as well. "What? What is it?" she asked.

"Dinosaurs," he replied softly.

"What?"

Thomas pointed towards the university gardens, a set of flowerbeds and carefully tended-to shrubs, ferns, and small saplings, along with herbs for the culinary art class and the vegetables for the agriculture classes. And right in the middle of the garden was a dinosaur. It was about five metres long, snout to tail, standing only about a metre high at the hip, with a long arched neck, a whiplike tail, small head, bulky barrel body, and four trunk-like legs. It was browsing through the gardens, grazing on the decorative ferns that ringed the flowerbed.

Jamie clutched his arm tighter, eyes wide. "Oh…my…God…"


	12. Rex

"Okay, Connor, we got everything on your list," said Stephen as he returned to Lilian's house, an armful of electronics in his grip.

The student had dozed off again, slumped over against Abby with his head against her chest, but when the door snapped closed, he shot upright as if he'd been stuck with a pin. "M'awake," he slurred, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "Oh, Stephen, you're back. You got everything on the list?"

"Yes," said Stephen patiently, setting the bag on the table. "Have at it."

Connor gave him a weak, wry salute before rifling through the boxes, taking out different random bits of electronic gear. Most of it was cheap and easily found, some of it even secondhand junk that'd been bought at a thrift shop. And he began taking it apart like tinker toys, pulling out chips and wires. Abby sat beside him, one arm draped protectively around his back. It seemed that a sick Connor invoked some kind of protective instinct, keeping herself firmly attached to his side like a petite blond shadow.

Cutter ran one hand back through his hair and frowned in distaste at the tangled, dirty mess. He was still wearing the same clothes from the day before, and this made the second day he'd gone without a shower. It was an uncomfortable feeling.

He went still as Jenny came over to stand beside him, close enough that her arm lightly brushed against his own. "Do you think we'll be able to get back home?" she asked, watching Connor as he fiddled around with all the electronics.

"I have faith in Connor's ability to make us a handheld detector," Cutter replied carefully, picking the words. "But as far as us finding another anomaly like the one that brought us here? I'm not sure."

She turned her head to look at him, a small frown playing at her lips. "Nick…" she began.

Before she could say anything else and before he could say anything stupid, the phone rang. Without thinking about it, he turned and picked up the phone. "Hello?" he asked.

_"Professor Cutter?"_ said Thomas's slightly-dreamy voice.

"Thomas?" Cutter asked in bafflement. What was the kid calling his own house for?

_"What does an anomaly look like?"_

He frowned. "What? Why do you—?"

_"Does it look like a big ball of hovering light with pieces of glass floating around it?"_

Cutter felt his heart drop for a second. "Thomas, is there an anomaly?" he asked.

_"Yes. There's a dinosaur eating our school garden,"_ the boy answered.

Stunned, the professor almost dropped the phone, then reached out and grasped Jenny by the arm, drawing her in closer. He held the phone where she could hear it as well. "Thomas, I want you to repeat what you just told me, Miss Lewis is listening," he said.

_"Good afternoon, Miss Lewis. There's a dinosaur in our school garden. It's eating all the ferns. Does an anomaly look like a ball of floating light with glass around it?"_ asked Thomas again.

"Yes, Thomas, that's an anomaly," he replied, and now Stephen was listening too, his head tilted towards the phone as he strained to hear the boy speak. "What kind of dinosaur is it? How big? What's it look like?" Cutter prayed to every deity he could think of, praying that a prehistoric predator wasn't loose on a college campus.

_"It's one of the long-necked kinds. Sauropod, but it's not one of the great huge ones. Five metres long, maybe a metre high at the shoulder. There's only one,"_ said Thomas. _"I know you're dinosaur wranglers. Will you come and send it home?"_

Cutter nodded, even though the boy couldn't see. "Yeah, we'll be right there. Try to keep everyone else away from the gardens, and make sure it doesn't go anywhere," he said. "What school do you go to?"

_"Central Metropolitan University. Goodbye."_ The line disconnected.

Cutter stared at the phone for a heartbeat before he set it back in the cradle. "Abby, Connor, we're gonna have to leave. Thomas found an anomaly on school campus, and there's a sauropod eating the gardens. We've got work to do."

* * *

"It's almost like a big cow," said Jamie as she held out another handful of fern fronds to the dinosaur. It didn't seem at all afraid of them, probably because it knew that they were too small and weak to hurt it.

Thomas nodded as he lightly ran a hand over the dinosaur's flank, feeling the tough, pebbly skin rise and fall as it breathed. The beast lowed quietly, tugging a frond out of Jamie's grip, and they both smiled. Not far off, what looked like a miniature sun glittered and sparkled in the shadow of an empty storage building. It shone with a soft, golden-white glow, surrounded by a slowly rotating halo of what appeared to be broken glass. It was beautiful to look at.

"Jamie! Thomas!" called a familiar voice, and they turned towards the sound as Cutter approached with the rest of his team, hastily slowing as they came closer. "Well, Connor?"

"Massospondylus. Jurassic, maybe 150 million years," said the young man, rubbing at his eyes. He was still sick, it seemed. Connor looked at the long fronds in Jamie's hand. "Has it eaten anything other than the ferns?"

"No."

"Most plants in the Jurassic were gingkoes and ferns. That's probably the closest thing to its natural diet," he said. "Stephen, Cutter, if we pull up the rest of the ferns, we can probably just lead it back."

"The agriculture students are gonna be really mad at us," Thomas noted as they began pulling up ferns, making a trail of the fronds back to the anomaly. The massospondylus shuffled after them, huffing and lowing as it followed the trail of food. And just as Connor predicted, the hulking prehistoric cow lumbered on through the anomaly. Only seconds after its long tail disappeared through the temporal rip, the anomaly shimmered, expanded, and then snapped closed again.

"Uhm, Cutter?" said Jamie hesitantly, and they turned towards her. The girl-woman was holding a creature in her was about the size of a large hawk or a small eagle, 60 centimetres long, with dark, greenish-gold plumage that would be perfect for blending into sunlight-dappled leaves, except for the bright scarlet feathers on its tail that it lifted up and fanned out like a warning. Instead of a feathery head and a beak it had a scaly, lizard head with a tooth-filled snout, and there were three clawed fingers on each wing at the joint of the wrist, grasping at her jacket sleeves, lizard-like head turning this way and that. If the anomaly did lead to the Jurassic, the creature could only be an archaeopteryx. "Can I keep him?" she asked.

The professor huffed. "I suppose there's no choice now," he answered.

Jamie smiled, looking down at her new pet. "I'll call him Rex."


	13. Hypothetically

Sitting at her desk and sorting through paperwork, Detective Inspector Lilian Forsythe felt her mobile vibrate in her pocket, pulled it out, and flipped it open. A text from Tom-Tom: _Hypothetically speaking, if I found a dinosaur, could I keep it as a pet?_

She stared at the text for a few long minutes, hoping that this was only one of his peculiar stray thoughts, brought on by talking with Cutter. Finally, she texted back, _Depends. What kind of hypothetical dinosaur are we talking about?_

_A little one._

_Will it stay little?_

_Yes._

_What does it eat?_

_Bugs, mice, and frogs._

_What does it look like?_

_Kind of like a hawk, except it's green and gold instead of brown._

_Tom-Tom._

_Yes?_

_Is there a dinosaur?_

_Just a little one._

She closed her eyes with a low groan of irritation, tilting back in her chair; she scrubbed her face with both hands. Of course. Of course, he would find a bloody dinosaur. _I swear to God, he'll end up giving me grey hairs before I'm forty,_ she thought, though she was smiling as she thought it. Lilian stared at her mobile for a moment, then smiled, shaking her head. Of course he'd find a dinosaur. Glancing around to ensure nobody else noticed, she picked up her mobile again.

_We'll talk about this when I get home._

_Jamie named him Rex._

_Of course she did._

Lilian put down her mobile once more, shaking her head. "Oh, God save me, what's happening to my life? First I deal with criminals, and now apparently, I'm dealing with dinosaurs too," she murmured quietly before pulling another case file towards her and opening it up. "Bloody dinosaurs. What next? Vampires and werewolves?"

* * *

"What are you making?" asked Jamie as she coddled her new pet, feeding the archaeopteryx small snippets of raw meat. The prehistoric creature seemed to be rapidly adjusting to human presence, perfectly at ease in her arms, looking around at its new surroundings. Even though it was a school day, both she and Thomas had decided to play hooky on account of the fact they'd just discovered a dinosaur on campus and now had a new pet to look after.

"A handheld anomaly detector," Connor replied. "If another anomaly shows up within 100 metres, this will let us know where it is." He looked up at the small creature nestled in Jamie's arms and smiled. "Y'know, in my universe, we have a pet dinosaur named Rex, too."

The young girl-woman instantly perked up some. "You do?"

"Mm-hm. He's not an archaeopteryx, though, he's a coelurosauravus, kind of like _Draco volans,_ only larger. He came from the Permian era."

"Cool." She snuggled the feathered lizard closer, and the archaeopteryx churred happily. "So, is that how you lot are gonna get home? I mean, I like having you guys around, but it's kind of weird looking at my doppelgänger every day." It was true. She liked seeing Connor and the others, but they didn't belong here. They had their own home to get back to, friends and families and jobs to return to.

The young man paused slightly, pushing one hand back through his hair so that it stood up in every direction like a demented punk-rocker. "Well, if we find the right anomaly," he answered at last, "then we just walk on through and go home."

Jamie frowned slightly because even as he said it, she could hear the faint notes of doubt in his voice, as if he didn't entirely believe that it would work out so smoothly. Instead of calling him out on it, she settled for stroking Rex's glossy golden-green feathers, hearing the archaeopteryx chirp happily at her.

Abby came over to sit on the couch beside Connor, reaching up to palce her hand against his forehead; he leant into the touch, eyes closing for a moment. "Your fever's gone down some," she noted, then lightly stroked one hand over his dark hair, smoothing it down some. "You really ought not be working so hard like this, Conn. Why not just take a break for a little while? You won't get any better unless you take it easy," she said. Whilst she'd expected him to take her advice, she hadn't expected him to shift over and lay his head in her lap. Abby felt a flush colour her cheeks, but she didn't try to push him away. Instead, she began stroking his hair again, lightly scratching his scalp with her nails; he hummed with pleasure, snuggling closer to her.

Just as Connor felt sleep start to pull at his mind, the anomaly detector on the table began to beep, a small red light appearing on the display screen. Like some kind of magic trick, he was instantly sitting up and staring at the tiny device with disbelief, as if he could scarcely believe it was actually working. "Cutter! We've got one!" he said, leaping to his feet and brandishing the bodged-together handheld proudly.

"It must be close, too. Let's go," the professor answered, snatching up his jacket.

Jamie stood up as well, concern etching her fair features. "Shouldn't you call the police?"

"No!" came the unanimous answer from five different voices. "These creatures have to be handled properly, otherwise the consequences could be a total disaster," explained Stephen. "In our timeline, our entire job is to handle these creatures and keep the general public, including the cops, well out of the way. Now either you stay here or you can come with, but if you come with, you better stay well out of the way."

Jamie hesitated, then glanced over at Thomas; he was practically bouncing with excitement, looking at her eagerly. "Alright, fine. Let's go, then."


	14. Trouble

"What in the name of God is _that?"_ said Jamie, clutching Thomas's hand tightly in her own as the team eyed up the peculiar looking creature. It was only about as tall as a man's chest, walking on two long, strong hind legs with short, wiry forearms held in front of it. In the dim light of the alley, it was hard to tell what colour it was, but what was easy to see was the great spines that crowned the top of its head, some almost fifteen centimetres long. The anomaly glittered only a few feet away, right at the dead-end of the narrow alleyway, and the creature was curiously sniffing about its new surroundings, apparently intrigued by this new place. To the team's disappointment, it was the normal golden-white colour, not the violet-purple they sought.

"That is an excellent question," Stephen replied quietly. "Connor?"

"Stygimoloch," said the student.

Jamie lifted her eyebrows. _"Gesundheit."_

Connor rolled his eyes in exasperation. "No, that's what it's called. Part of the pachycephalosaur family and the only kind known to have spikes on its head. Herbivore. Pretty harmless, honestly," he explained.

From beside him, the tiny blond gave a tiny snort. "Harmless? Look at those bloody spikes! It's a walking pincushion, and you say it's _harmless?"_ she hissed back.

Eyes still fixated on the stygimoloch, Cutter spoke up absently in support of his student, "Actually, most archaeologists agree that the spikes were more for show than actual use, most likely for mating displays or territorial disputes. Sort of like peacocks showing their tail feathers to attract a mate."

"So, d'you think we could just scare it back?" asked Jenny from beside the professor, and he glanced over at her curiously. "I mean, if it is an herbivore, it'd probably get scared easily if we made a lot of noise, and then it ought to just run back through, right?"

The corner of his mouth curled up in a smile. "Aye, that ought to work."

Jenny smiled back, then to his shock, she straightened up and walked forward, directly towards the stygimoloch. "Oi!" she shouted, and the herbivore swung about to face her. She waved her arms at the beast. "Shoo! Go home! Shoo!" she cried loudly, striding towards it as she spoke. The creature let out a squeal of alarm, turned about, and darted away, disappearing through the anomaly in the blink of an eye. Jenny lowered her arms, a look of surprise on her face. "Oh. It worked. How about that?" she murmured under her breath.

Cutter walked over to her, a grin still on his lips. "That's...not bad. Not exactly what I had in mind, but definitely not bad," he admitted.

Thomas and Jamie came up beside them, staring at the anomaly in curiosity. The fractured light sent peculiar, entrancing patterns of light-shadow across the walls and ground around it, bathing them all in the strange illumination of the temporal gateway. "So...what exactly _is_ an anomaly?" asked Jamie, staring at the glittering anomaly. "I mean, I get that there's dinosaurs, but...where do they come from?"

"Anomalies are...well, they're like tears in time. Think wormholes, except through time instead of space," Cutter explained. "On the other side is the Earth, just millions of years in the past. Seeing as how that was a stygimoloch, this one leads to the Cretaceous, probably 70 million years or so. The anomalies appear and reappear, but they don't ever fully disappear."

The tiny girl-woman looked up at him. "Right. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it," she said scathingly.

"I'm serious." Cutter sounded offended. "You don't believe me? Fine. Come here. I'll prove it." Taking Jamie by the arm and Thomas by the jacket, he pulled them both foward towards the anomaly. It showed no signs of deterioration, so he figured it'd be safe to show them the other side for a moment at least. They stepped through the anomaly, feeling the magnetic field swarm across their skin and make their hair stand on end...and with the next step, they no longer stood in an alleyway in the midst of Greater London. They stood in the midst of a Cretaceous clearing, surrounded on all sides by towering trees and shrubbery, the sudden glare of sunlight blinding them momentarily. Cutter could see a small herd of stygimoloch grazing several metres away amongst the undergrowth.

Jamie clutched at his arm, eyes wide and mouth hanging open as she took in her new surroundings. "Oh my God. Oh my God," she whispered over and over like a mantra.

Thomas, however, looked like a small child just let into a candy shop. "This is so _awesome!"_ he practically squeaked, almost hopping with excitement, and Cutter had to chuckle at the teen's childish enthusiasm.

"Believe me now?" he asked Jamie, and she nodded hastily, looking too petrified to even move. "Good. Let's get back before the anomaly closes." Cutter practically had to drag Thomas back through, much to the young man's disappointment. The sudden change from the muggy Cretaceous afternoon to the cool London night made all three shiver slightly. "Right, we should probably wait here until it closes, make sure that nothing else comes out."

They ended up sitting about the alley for nearly three hours, bored out of their minds until the anomaly at last disappeared, freeing them from watch duty. As they walked down the sidewalk together, heading for the nearest diner in search of something to eat, until Thomas suddenly went pale. "Oh, no," he said softly.

"What? What's the matter?" Jamie asked in concern.

"It's almost ten," he said quietly. "Mum got home at six." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile, fingers trembling slightly as he opened it and dialed his mother's number.

It rang only once. _"Thomas Anthony Forsythe, just where the hell have you been?!"_ Lilian shouted, loud enough for all of them to hear. Thomas held the mobile six inches from his ear and could still hear every word as if she'd been standing just beside him. _"Nearly four hours and not even a bloody text! You're lucky I didn't send the entire bloody division out looking for you! And why is there a bloody dinosaur in my flat?!"_

Stephen elbowed Cutter's side. "Y'know, I'm starting to see her inner Helen," he said quietly.


	15. Worry

When they returned to the house, Lilian was absolutely livid, her eyes blazing fury as she marched up to them. "What the _hell_ were you thinking?!" she shouted at them. "I mean, I get home and find the entire lot of you gone, no phone call, no text, not even a bloody note! I was worried out my bloody _mind_ about you!" She grabbed Thomas by the shoulders and gave him a shake, but they could see that she had been truly worried about her son.

"Mum, I—"

"I don't even want to hear it, young man. I swear to God, if you ever do that again, I'll ground you until you're old and grey. And _you!"_ she cried, wheeling around to face Jamie; the tiny blond actually jumped back a step. "Go home before your uncle shoots you!"

Jamie blanched. "Oh, God, Uncle Alex, I totally forgot!" she yelped. "I-I gotta go. Bye, Tom-Tom, I'll see you tomorrow!" she said hastily, running for the door and taking out her mobile in the process, no doubt to call her uncle.

Cutter and the others were trying their hardest not to laugh as Lilian lit into Thomas like a firecracker, but just as quickly, she whirled around to face them, rounding on Cutter. "And don't think that _you're_ not in trouble either! What the hell were you thinking?! You just dragged my son off to God knows where, and you didn't think to let his _mother_ know where he was? You're lucky I don't have you _arrested!"_ she shouted, jabbing him in the chest with one finger, forcing him to back away until he was pinned against the counter. Cutter couldn't speak, only stammer incoherently as she assaulted him. "You idiots! You'd better start talking! If someone doesn't tell me where the hell you lot were these past four bloody hours or I will go get my handcuffs!"

The professor was rendered speechless beneath the force of her maternal fury; luckily for him, however, Jenny was kind enough to jump in on his part. "Miss Forsythe, please, calm down. There was an anomaly, and we had to go and find it before any creatures could escape," she said in a placating tone.

"Creatures? Are you bloody kidding me?!" Lilian hissed.

There was an indignant squawk from overhead, and then a green-and-gold feathered creature came swooping down from the ceiling, sailing directly over their heads to land on Thomas's shoulder. Rex clung to his shoulder, digging his claws into the fabric of the young man's sweater, curling his feathery tail around Thomas's neck. "What do you call that, Miss Forsythe?" asked Jenny, gesturing to the archaeopteryx. "That is an archaeopteryx from the Jurassic period. An anomaly had shown up, and he was stranded here when it closed. Another one appeared earlier, and we had to keep watch on it until it closed so no more creatures got stuck in this time."

Lilian glared over at the feathery creature currently clinging to her son's shoulder. Rex fanned out the scarlet feathers of his tail with a hiss. "And you couldn't think to call me to let me know?" she asked, though some of the fury had drained out of her voice.

"That was my fault, Mum," Thomas said hastily, jumping in for defence of his friends. "I-I was just…you wouldn't believe what I saw! There was a real dinosaur, right in front of me, and then I saw the Cretaceous period and—"

She waved a hand. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! _What?"_ Lilian said. Just like that, her anger had returned. She was like the Ferrari of mothers, going from calm to fury in 0.65 nanoseconds. She leveled a glare in Cutter's direction once more. "He was _where?"_

The professor was wise enough not to answer, only shrunk back away from her rage despite being a few inches taller and probably thirty pounds heavier than her.

"Mum," Thomas said, drawing her attention back to him. "I promise, nobody got hurt, nothing illegal happened, and we're all home safe, okay? Everything worked out—"

"I don't care if a bloody T-Rex showed up in the middle of a roundabout during rush hour. So long as you live in my house, you are going to let me know where the hell you're at if you're going to be gone four bloody hours! Now get upstairs to bed before I handcuff you to your desk!" Lilian barked, jabbing one finger at the staircase that led to his room. Thomas hung his head, looking like a kicked puppy, and she softened for a moment. She sighed quietly and rested a hand on his arm. "Go to bed, Tom-Tom. We'll talk about this tomorrow," she said in a gentler tone of voice.

Thomas nodded and shuffled up the steps with Rex still on his shoulder.

* * *

As soon as she stepped through the door, Jamie found herself being embraced tightly by her aunt. "Where in the world _were_ you?" Claudia asked, holding the teenager at arm's length and looking her over anxiously. "I mean, you disappear for hours, no call, no text, and the college said you didn't show up for school today."

Jamie very nearly called her aunt 'Jenny' but managed to catch herself just in time. It was simply bizarre, coming face-to-face with a woman that looked so alike to Jenny Lewis that actually was someone else entirely. "I'm sorry, Aunt Claudia, really. Tom-Tom—I mean, Thomas wasn't feeling well, so I skipped class to make sure he was okay. I didn't realise that it'd gotten so late," she lied, though guilt was already knotting in her belly. She _hated_ lying to Claudia and Alex, she really did. They'd treated her like their own daughter, and she loved them like her parents.

Alex appeared beside Claudia, his arm going around her waist. There was a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth that suggested he knew far more than he let on; the expression was so alike to Professor Cutter's that Jamie was struck by their similarities. "Well...I guess that since this is only the first time you've ever done this, we'll let it slide. But the next time you play hooky with your boyfriend, I'll have your mobile and laptop for the week," he said.

Heat flooded her cheeks, and she could feel her ears burning. "He's not m'boyfriend," she mumbled quickly.

"The fact that you answered to _that_ and not my threat to take your stuff says otherwise," Alex replied, his grin spreading. It was infectious, it seemed, because now Claudia was smiling too, eyeing Jamie with new speculation.

"Tom-Tom isn't my boyfriend!" Jamie repeated.

Claudia grinned wider. "So now he's Tom-Tom?"

"I'm going to bed!" she said, striding towards the stairs. The sound of her aunt and uncle laughing trailed after her, making her blush burn hotter.


	16. Planning

The third day of their being in the wrong timeline, Cutter found himself sitting on the rooftop of Lilian's building, absently pushing the gravel around with the toe of his boot. A thick overcast that threatened rain coated the sky in a slate-grey blanket, and a chilled wind tugged at his clothes and hair, making him pull his jacket closer for warmth. He wondered if they would ever manage to find their way home again, if they'd ever see the ARC. A grin pulled at the corner of his mouth. Lester was probably planning how to kill each one of the team by now, alibi and all, for disappearing on him like that. Cutter couldn't help the small laugh that bubbled out of his throat, imagining their boss sitting up in his office, spluttering with incoherent rage, plotting out their individual punishments.

"Something funny?" asked Jenny's voice, and he lifted his head. She stood near the stairwell, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders; she walked over to him and leant up against the short half-wall around the rooftop.

"Just thinking...Lester's probably going to kill us when we get back, isn't he?" he asked.

Jenny fought a smile for only a half-second before she started giggling, the bright chime of her voice mingling with his own deeper laughter for a moment. "Yeah, probably," she agreed once their laughter died down, but then her grin faded, expression turning serious once more._ "Are _we going to get back, Nick? Home, I mean?"

"Of course we are," he replied, though he inwardly doubted his own words. For all they knew there could be another anomaly out there right now, but they had no way to track down the temporal gates without a proper anomaly detector. As skilled as Connor was, the student couldn't possibly build an ADD of capacity without access to technology beyond their reach. Glancing over, he saw how she looked less than convinced, and on impulse, he reached out and grasped one of her hands in his own, absently noting how small her hands were tucked in his own. "Jenny," he said in a softer tone. "I promise, we're going to get out of this mess. We'll find a way back home. Trust me."

She nodded, then to his shock, she stepped forward, closing the space between them. Her arms went around his waist, and she laid her cheek against his chest, bowing her head forward slightly so she could just manage to tuck her head beneath his chin. Cutter went rigid for a moment, stunned by the unexpected display of affection. For the first time in his history of ever being hugged by women, he didn't know quite where to put his hands. But then he relaxed, winding both arms around her back and resting his cheek against her soft hair. She smelt delightful, he noted absentmindedly, like strawberry shampoo and soft, natural musk. A part of his mind reminded him incessantly that this was probably the best chance he'd ever have to talk to her alone, but he really didn't want to ruin the moment. She was rarely ever so emotional, and he felt unusually warm inside, knowing that she trusted him enough to be vulnerable around him.

The door to the stairwell burst open, and they both jumped apart in surprise, though they still stood with hands resting upon each other. Connor froze mid-step, his eyes flicking between them, and he snapped his mouth closed. "I—erm, sorry 'bout that," he said quickly, ears turning pink as he realised that he was intruding on a personal moment.

Jenny took her hands from Cutter's waist and pulled the blanket snug about her shoulders again, easing back slightly to put a bit more space between them. "That's alright, Connor," she said, though there was a pink tint to her cheeks. "What is it you wanted?"

"Actually, Cutter, I had a bit of a thought," the student said, shuffling out onto the roof, even though he still looked slightly reluctant to intrude. "There's already been two anomalies here, yeah?"

"What of it?" Cutter asked.

"I was just thinking…they don't have an ARC in this timeline. They don't have an ADD or a response team. When we go home…who's gonna handle the creatures?" Connor asked.

The professor and the PR exchanged a silent glance; Connor had a point. When the team did manage to get back to their own timeline, there would be nobody left about to handle the anomalies that were appearing here. Even if it wasn't their own timeline, Cutter didn't think that he nor any of the others could simply leave these people unprotected, running blind with creatures about. "You've a point there," he admitted, running a hand back through his thick hair. "C'mon, let's head back in. We'll talk to Lilian about it."

As they headed back down the stairwell, Cutter couldn't help but feel that he'd missed the best opportunity he'd have to talk to Jenny…but then he remembered how good it felt with her arms around his waist, all soft curves and warm skin, and found that he didn't mind too much.

* * *

They sat in the living room—Cutter, Abby, Stephen, Jenny, Connor, and Lilian. A well-scolded Thomas had been sent off to school with a warning to be home as soon as classes ended, and he was banned from accompanying the team on any new creature alerts until further notice. Rex had been allowed to stay, on the condition that he was Thomas's responsibility. Professor and student had explained the situation to Lilian, the idea of forming some kind of response team to manage the appearance of anomalies.

"So you're saying these…anomalies…they're going to keep showing up?" Lilian asked once they had finished speaking.

Connor nodded. "These past two times, there's only been herbivores and small creatures, but they're not always going to be small and harmless," he said. "I mean, what if a stegosaurus shows up next time? Or a brachiosaurus? A T-rex? There's got to be somebody to keep people safe, make sure the creatures are managed properly."

"It might seem like killing the creatures is a good idea," put in Cutter, leaning forward with elbows on his knees, "but it really can have a damaging impact. You don't know how killing the creatures might affect the past, and there's a huge possibility that prehistoric viruses could cause an epidemic here, or vice versa. Connor's right. You'll have to consider forming some kind of response team to keep people safe."

Lilian was quiet for several moments, but then she sat forward. "What do you have in mind?"


	17. Gathering

Abby was barely listening as Cutter and Lilian went on about forming a response team in this timeline. Her focus was on Connor. Her geeky flatmate was still looking pale and sickly, with terrible bruise-dark shadows beneath his eyes and a drawn, gaunt look about him. His fever had broken only just last night, and he had been working hard in the past three days, hardly giving himself a chance to rest. She wished that he'd take a kip on the couch for a while, eat something other than nibbling on crackers.

As the others got on like a house on fire, Abby scooted closer to Connor and put one arm around his shoulders. He startled under her touch like a skittish creature, shying away from her arm for a second before he went still. She hated how jumpy he was, always flinching and balking as if fearing a blow would rain down on him at any moment. But once he got used to the presence of her arm around him, he snuggled a little closer, tucking his head into her shoulder. "Why don't you take a rest, Conn?" she suggested quietly, combing through his hair with her fingers, giving his scalp a gentle scratch with her nails. "You're not gonna get better unless you take it easy."

"M'fine," he mumbled back, but the harsh coughing that followed belied his words.

She laid her hand across his forehead. "Connor, you're feeling warm again. If your fever comes back, I _will_ sit on you to make you rest," she threatened.

Connor only smiled into her shoulder, a raspy chuckle leaving his throat. "I've picked up hay bales that weigh more than you," he answered, his voice already sounding drowsy. "Sittin' on me ain't gonna do anythin'."

Her eyebrows went up. _Hay bales?_ "Yeah, but I bet your hay bales don't know kickboxing," she murmured back, her lips against the top of his hair.

"No…they don't," he mumbled, then fell silent. His lashes drifted closed, and a quiet snore slithered out from his slightly parted lips. Abby smiled and gently patted the top of his head, pressing a soft kiss into his hair. _Good night, Conn._ She eased back until she was lying back against the couch, arms around her slender flatmate's body.

"So, do you think that you could do it, Connor?" asked Stephen suddenly; the team had gone on with their conversation, entirely oblivious to the two sitting on the couch, not even realising that the young man had drifted off.

Abby lifted a finger to her lips in a gesture for silence as Connor shifted, mumbling softly at the sound of his name. "Let him get some rest," she said softly.

"Sorry," the tracker muttered back.

As they started talking again, going on, Abby stroked Connor's thick hair, her arms resting around his warm body. She lightly brushed her lips over his slightly-feverish forehead, and he mumbled in his sleep. A part of her wondered why this was so easy to do now, when they were stranded so far from home. She could never be so comfortable with him at the flat, though that was more her own doing than his. He was always willing to snuggle at home, but she'd always push him away. But now she was starting to think that it was the stupidest thing she had done, keeping him at arm's length. Abby closed her eyes and cuddled him closer. Connor didn't stir, but he hummed in his sleep and curled his tall body around hers like a small child snuggling against a teddy. She rested her cheek against his soft hair and smiled.

* * *

"And you're _sure_ that you can trust these people?" asked Stephen under his breath.

"100 per-cent. I've worked with the lot of them almost fifteen years," Lilian replied. They were sitting at a park bench, waiting for the arrival of the others. She and the team had come to an agreement that only certain people were to be privy to the secret of the anomalies. Damien Beckett, Owen Howard, Jez McKeown, and Nikki Reynholm were four, the other coppers under Lilian's authority at the Yard—people that knew how to handle a gun and react under pressure. Then there was Jamie's aunt and uncle, Claudia Brown and Alex Berenson—the ones with ties to the Home Office. Then, of course, there was Thomas and Jamie themselves, who refused point-blank to be left out. Now the Forsythes, Jamie, and the rest of the ARC team were waiting for the arrival of the others, having called all six people to the park. Thomas held a sleeping Rex bundled up in his jacket; the feathery time-traveller was living proof of the anomaly's existence.

"Damien's here," mumbled Thomas quietly just seconds before a sleek black motorcycle came up to the kerb. The same ginger-haired man that'd arrested Stephen and Abby climbed off, looking particularly intimidating in a black motorcycle jacket.

"What's up, boss? What's the big deal?" Damien asked, running one hand over his hair until it stuck up in all directions like a demented punk-rocker at concert. His gaze flickered over to Stephen and Abby. "Ah, Talbot and Tinker Bell strike again."

"That's not Talbot," Lilian corrected.

The tall man frowned, looking ready to argue, but then he caught sight of Connor. His gaze went from Thomas and Jamie…to Connor and Abby…and then back again. "Uh, boss…?"

"I'll explain everything once the others are here," answered the dark-haired woman.

One by one, the others arrived. Owen Howard was just as tall and intimidating as Damien was, with tanned skin and neatly combed black hair that went with his dark eyes, definitely the soldier type. Jez McKeown was lean and slender like a hunting cat, brown hair cropped short and blue eyes always observant; he spoke with a low, melodious Irish brogue. Nikki Reynholm was pale and beautiful, with shiny dark hair and eyes a paler blue than Jez's, more like a model than a copper. Not long after Nikki's arrival did Alex and Claudia show up, looking baffled at the odd gathering of people. Surprise and shock claimed their features when they spotted Cutter and Jenny.

Lilian stood up. "Right then. Here we go down the bloody rabbit hole," she said softly, then raised her voice. "Alright, you lot, I called you here because there's something that we need to discuss. Something pretty important. You're gonna want to sit down."


	18. Team

It took over an hour to explain everything between Lilian and Cutter, and when they'd finished speaking, there was total silence amongst the group, the only noise being the general background sounds of the city. After a small eternity of silence, it was Alex that finally broke the silence. He sat on a bench beside Claudia, and she grasped his arm tightly in her own as if he was her only anchor to reality. "So…so you're telling me that there are… holes in time that you call 'anomalies' that just appear and disappear wherever, and sometimes they lead into prehistoric times, sometimes they lead thousands of years in the future, and there are creatures that come through. And _they—"_ Alex gestured to the ARC team standing together like a small, scruffy family of vagabonds. "—are the alternate versions of us that got transported here through a stray anomaly, trying to find a way home, and you brought us here so we could be some kind of…emergency response team to make sure that these—these _creatures_ don't end up in the general public? Is—is that the gist of it? Is that the deal?"

Lilian winced slightly at how ludicrous it all sounded, then nodded. "Yeah, that's about it, Mr. Berenson," she admitted. Three days ago, she'd have laughed as well, and she remembered how ridiculous it'd sounded to her when Abby and Stephen first explained it.

He gave a weak, slightly hysteric laugh. "Great. Glad I grasp the basic concept." He bowed his head forward, hands clasped in front of him; it almost looked like he was praying for a moment. Then he lifted his head to look around at the others once more, shaking his head. "What do you want from us? I-I mean, why us?"

"I'd like your help. Like you said, there has to be some kind of response team to make sure that whenever the creatures appear, the public is kept out of it and civilians are kept safe," replied Lilian, then her dark gaze went to the four coppers from her division. "And last time I checked, keeping the public safe is the main point in our job description."

Damien ran one hand back through his hair. "Well, Christ, boss, you sure don't go halfway about things, do you?" he asked with a weak laugh, and Lilian gave a small shrug as if to say 'what'd you expect from me?'

"You don't have to do this," put in Cutter, and all eyes shifted over to him. Whilst he looked near the same as Alex, there was a slight difference between them, the way they spoke and how they stood. "You can just go home and forget any of this ever happened tonight. Or...you can stay and be part of something that nobody else in the world will see. I won't lie to you. It's dangerous. People get hurt. Sometimes they end up dead, and there's no guarantee that it won't be you. But it's also exhilarating and amazing, the things that you get to see..." He paused and took a deep breath. "It's your choice."

The others were all silent as they mulled over the professor's words. Claudia was the first to speak, lifting her warm brown gaze to Jamie. "You're doing this no matter what we say, aren't you?" she asked; her niece moved closer to Thomas's side by way of answer, taking his hand in her own. Claudia shook her head slowly. "Right then. Alex?" She looked to the man beside her.

He shifted his gaze to her, a small grin pulling at his lips. "Hell's bells, Claudia. It's dinosaurs. How can I say no?" he asked weakly, and she smiled back, leaning her head against his shoulder; neither of them noticed the look that Cutter threw in their direction. They both turned to Lilian. "We'll help you," he said.

She nodded. "Thank you."

"Ah, damn, boss, you know me. Always been a dream of mine, saving the world from dinosaurs," laughed Damien, shoving both hands in his pockets. "Let's do this." The ginger copper turned to Owen, his partner and closest friend. He wrapped an arm around the other man's shoulders, giving him a shake. "C'mon. Say you'll do it. You know you want to. Say it. Say it, you big ninny."

Owen rolled his eyes and shrugged off Damien's arm, smiling despite himself, and looked over at Lilian. "I'm in, too. Just to make sure Beckett doesn't get eaten," he added with a friendly jab towards the other man.

Jez shrugged. "Why not? Not everyday you get to live through the real _Jurassic Park,_ eh?" he said.

Standing at the Irishman's side, Nikki smiled. "I might as well. Someone's got to keep the Three Stooges in line," she said, jerking a thumb at the other three male officers beside her.

"Oi! That's the Three _Musketeers!"_ protested Damien.

Lilian rolled her eyes in exasperation. It was good to know that some things never changed. "Good. Well, then, I suppose that it's settled. Tomorrow, we'll start working out—"

She went quiet as a loud beeping noise entered the air, seemingly originating from Connor's jacket. The student paled slightly, then pulled out the handheld detector. He'd taken to carrying it around on him all the time, just in case, and it seemed that now his paranoia was starting to pay off. "We've got another one," he said, looking at the small display screen. "It's about 250 metres...thataway," he said, pointing slightly off to his left. "What's over there?"

"Not a whole lot," replied Lilian, already on her feet. "There's an old storage warehouse, but that place hasn't been used in years. It's up for demolition soon."

"Which means that there probably won't be a whole lot of people around it," Cutter pointed out, then looked over at the newly-formed team. "Alright you lot, looks like you're about to get a crash-course in anomaly response. C'mon."


	19. Crash Course

"I knew that there'd be something big," said Connor matter-of-factly as they stood in the warehouse, shaking his head. "I just _knew_ it."

And big it was. Seven metres long and two and a half metres wide, a fully grown Euoplocephalus was snuffling around the empty warehouse, a solid two tonnes of living history. It was a prehistoric tank, coated in a tough, bony hide that was covered in plates of body armour. Even its short neck was protected by bone rings, moving with its wide body slung low to the ground on four trunk-like legs. A heavy clubbed tail swung behind it, a deadly weapon in its own right. The creature didn't seem to afraid of its new surroundings and was curiously nosing its way about, nudging at empty boxes and crates with its surprisingly small, well-armoured head. Several feet behind it, an anomaly glittered and sparkled, casting a prismatic light through the gloom of the warehouse.

"Okay…now I'm a believer," gasped Alex softly as they stared at the massive creature. His eyes were wide and his face was pale, but there was also a glimmer of excitement in his gaze, one hand tightly clutching Claudia's. "I kinda thought you lot were jerking my chain, but…." He blew out a heavy breath. "What is it?"

"It's called Euoplocephalus," Connor replied.

"That's from the late Cretaceous, right?" asked Thomas quietly, standing just near his older doppelgänger's elbow.

"Yep."

Cutter began to step forward, moving slowly as to not accidentally startle the enormous creature. The Euoplocephalus turned its wedge-shaped head towards him, sniffing at the air, and he grinned like a boy at Christmas when the behemoth came close enough to touch, apparently fascinated by this small two-legged thing that stood before it. "Oh, you beauty," he murmured softly. In the dim light, the ankylosaur looked to be grey, black, and white, except for two surprisingly small yellow eyes. He laughed softly as it nudged his chest with its beak-like mouth. Having decided that the human man was not a threat nor was he food, the Euoplocephalus lost interest in him, returning to its study of the surrounding warehouse. He slowly extended a hand to touch its wide flank; the pebbly skin felt hard as rock under his hand, moving slightly as the creature breathed, studded with stone-hard osteoderms that'd make a predator think twice about attacking.

Lilian edged her way over to him, one hand resting on her sidearm even though she doubted a bullet would do anything against this living tank. "Okay, Dinosaur Wrangler, how exactly do you suggest we get _this_ back through the anomaly?" she asked quietly.

"Not sure yet," he replied absently, still lost in the awe of seeing the creature so close. Lilian couldn't help but smile at his childish enthusiasm, how a man as old as her could be reduced to an excited boy. It was easy to understand why he was so good at his job—he loved it.

"It's so calm," Damien said, eyeing up the massive reptile with a look of awe.

"I doubt it's scared of us," Abby replied in the same hushed voice as she studied the creature with the same rabid fascination as Cutter. "Look at that hide, and that tail. We're like ants to it. One twitch of that tail, and every important bone in the human body is gravel," she said, and the copper paled slightly, swallowing hard at the thought of being pulverised by a giant prehistoric creature.

As they all tried to think of some way to lure the Euoplocephalus back through the anomaly without getting someone trampled to dust, Cutter stepped up onto a platform along the wall, now able to get a proper look at the creature. It was a lot bigger than the fossils suggested it was, and far more intimidating despite it being an herbivore.

_Clash-clang!_

The metallic crash echoed through the warehouse as the curious beast nosed at a precarious stack of crates and tipped them over, knocking several pieces of copper piping to the concrete floor with a crash that was near deafening in the silence. The Euoplocephalus let out a loud braying sound of fear, backing away from the pipes and pawing at the ground with its massive forefeet. Every human in the warehouse froze, hardly daring to breathe. They all winced as another length of pipe fell off the stack with another echoing clang. Anxious now, the huge creature started twitching its heavy clubbed tail, a deadly mace of bone. Of all the rotten luck in the world, a car alarm started blaring just outside, and the already skittish ankylosaur snorted in terror, lashing out with its tail. It slammed into the metal side of a shipping crate and knocked a massive dent in the plate steel. "Get out of the way!" shouted Cutter as the creature turned, aiming to defend itself.

The Euoplocephalus snapped its heavy clubbed tail once more; this time the heavy mace was heading directly towards _him,_ and he leapt backwards not a second too soon. The fused plates of bony armour passed so close to him that he felt the breeze, and the lethal club of bone only just grazed him, just enough to knock him off-balance. Cutter staggered backwards and slipped off the edge of the platform, falling back through the window just behind him with a tremendous crash of broken glass. The sound of the shattering window seemed to startle the huge ankylosaur into running, thundering back through the anomaly and vanishing into its proper time.

"Nick!" Jenny cried, staring at the shattered window.


	20. Windows

Jenny burst out a side door into the narrow alley. There was nobody else around this time of night, a fact that she was grateful for, and she turned to look for the professor. He lay on his back below the window, surrounded by glass. It hadn't been too far of a fall, only a metre or so, but knowing his track record, it was still a cause for concern. She ran over to Cutter, picking her way across the broken glass to carefully kneel down beside him. "Nick? Are you alright? Nick?" she asked nervously, one hand lightly resting against his chest.

He groaned, pulling a face as he shifted uncomfortably on the ground. With some effort, he managed to sit upright again; tiny pieces of broken glass fell from his hair, and Jenny brushed more bits and pieces off his coat. "This is not my night, apparently," he grunted.

Jenny bit her lip as she saw fresh blood oozing in vivid red lines down the side of his face from a cut on his cheek. "What hurts? Did that thing hit you? Any broken bones?" she asked; with the edge of her sleeve, she started wiping some of the blood off his skin.

"Nah, only brushed me. I believe that the real damage was to my dignity. Which I left somewhere back up there," he replied with a gesture up towards the now-empty window frame, jagged pieces of glass still clinging to the frame's edges.

She gave a weak giggle. "C'mon, let's get back inside to the others." Jenny started to grab his arm, help him to his feet, but she froze feeling the warm, tacky wetness of blood. She hadn't seen it at first against the dark fabric of his sleeve in the near-total dark of the night. Her gaze dropped to his arm to assess the damage. "Oh, God!" she yelped in both shock and horror. A piece of jagged glass was stuck into his upper arm just above the elbow, dark blood glistening wetly on his sleeve.

Cutter looked down at himself and blanched. "Oh. That's…that's a bit not good," he said quietly, grasping at his arm in suddenly-realised pain.

"Don't touch it—Nick!" Jenny squeaked in alarm as he abruptly grasped the glass shard and forcibly yanked it out of his arm, ignoring the sharp edges that cut into his palm. She pressed one hand to the wound, trying to slow the bleeding, and her stomach roiled sickeningly feeling his blood trickle through her fingers. "C'mon, get up. You're probably going to need stitches for this." Still grasping his arm, they got to their feet and made their way back into the warehouse.

Stephen came loping over to them, a smile on his lips. "There you two are. I was wondering where you'd—holy hell, what happened to you?" he asked, grin vanishing the moment that he saw the blood.

"Fell through the window. Lots of broken glass. Sharp edges, pointy ends, not a good mix with me around," Cutter replied, his words slightly slurred; he pointedly avoided looking directly at his blood-sodden arm. Pain and nausea were already fighting for the lead in him, and he knew that if he looked straight at the wound and the blood, nausea would win and he'd be sick. He never had a problem with blood...just so long as it was somebody else doing the bleeding. When it was his own, that's when he started feeling ill.

Lilian walked over to them. The rest of her new team were still circling the anomaly with awe and curiosity, but she knew the ARC group well enough to be concerned over them. "What's—? Oh, Christ. Sit down before you fall over," she ordered when she saw the blood on his sleeve, guiding him over to a crate for him to sit on. "Tom-Tom, get the kit." The boy nodded and darted out the warehouse. With sure, steady hands, Lilian peeled the blood-soaked fabric off Cutter's arm, revealing the deep cut in his flesh. "Ah, that's not so bad," she said, studying the clean wound. "You won't have to see the hospital for that." Thomas returned with a first-aid kit clasped tightly in his hands; being a copper and having seen her fair share of injuries, she kept a fully-stocked kit in her car at all times. It was times like this that she was most grateful for it. She unscrewed a bottle of antiseptic and poured it over the wound. Cutter made no noise but his hand fisted tight on his trouser leg, and Jenny put her hand over his own, lightly stroking her thumb across his knuckles. Lilian pressed a gauze pad over the wound and wrapped his arm up in bandages, taping it in place with expert precision. "There ya go. All better. It'll hold up for now, and I'll patch you up properly when we're back home." She clapped him on the arm, and he winced in sharp pain, hissing through his teeth like a burnt cat. "Oh, come on now, don't be a ninny." She jumped up and walked back to her team.

Cutter glared after her. "Yeah. Let's see you get a chunk of glass shoved through _your_ arm after being knocked out a window by a dinosaur. Then we'll see who's the ninny," he muttered under his breath.

* * *

"Stop squirming," Lilian said as Cutter jerked his arm away from her yet again. They sat in the locker room of the Yard; seeing as how it was the middle of the night, there was nobody else there. She was attempting to clean off his arm, but he kept pulling away.

The door opened, and the dark-haired form of Jenny walked in. "I'll fix this," she said with a gesture towards Cutter. "You go sort out the others."

Lilian nodded, handed over the flannel, and walked out of the locker room. Jenny sat on the bench beside Cutter and resumed the task of cleaning off his wound. He winced as she accidentally pressed too hard. "Sorry, sorry," she murmured back. Carefully, she resumed wiping away more of the dried blood around the wound.

Cutter peeked at the wound for only a few seconds at a time because it still made him dizzy, though part of him was rather curious. "Jenny?" he asked quietly, then winced at the sting as she daubed antiseptic across the injury.

"Hm?" She placed a fresh bandage on the cut and began to tape it in place.

"Why are you being so good to me?"

Her hands paused slightly, then smoothed out the bandage so it lay flat against his skin. "Why do you think?" she asked in reply.

He tilted his head like a puzzled bird, shifting slightly to look at her directly, eyes narrowed in focus. She was smiling at him with that soft look in her eyes that he'd noticed before but could never understand. "Jenny…" His voice came out soft and hoarse. He hesitated slightly, then grasped her hand in one of his own, running his thumb across the back of her hand, feeling how soft her skin was. She squeezed his hand. Steeling himself, he leant forward with the intent to only kiss her cheek, but she turned her head towards him, her warm lips meeting his. He hadn't really expected this, but he kissed her back anyways, hand coming to rest on her waist. When they pulled apart, he tilted his head to the side and murmured in her ear, "I have wanted to do that for so long, and if we were not stuck in another timeline, in the middle of a police station, you've no idea what I would do to you." He felt her shudder against him, a flush of blood staining her cheeks pink.

"Behave yourself," she murmured back, though there was a mischievous glimmer in her eyes.

Cutter smiled back and sat back. He looked at his injured arm. "So, Doctor Jenny, Medicine Woman, am I good to go?" he asked.

She smiled and patted his arm. "You are. Just…try not to go jumping through any more windows, okay?"

He scoffed as he pulled back on his shirt. "Trust me, it's not an experience that I'm all-too-eager to repeat."


	21. Salt

**A/N: I'm not sure how long this fic will be, but I've got a fairly good idea where it's going. Also, huge amounts of love to aunteeneenah, thou art my most faithful reviewer. I'd also love to hear feedback from any other readers. Reviews feed the muse.**

* * *

Connor sighed with relief as he rubbed his head dry with a towel. Lilian had showed them to the locker room in the Yard, and she'd let them all use the showers. After three days without access to a shower, shampoo and conditioner felt absolutely heavenly, so did hot water. He'd been given some spare clothes that'd been scrounged up from the lockers; they didn't fit too well, but the rest of his clothes were being washed, so he couldn't complain. As he walked back towards the changing room, he heard a soft sound that made him freeze in his tracks. Edging forward carefully, he peered around the corner…and had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep quiet.

Professor Cutter had Jenny backed into a corner, and the two were snogging like a pair of randy teenagers in secondary school. She had one hand buried in his hair, the other fisted around the back of his shirt, and he had both arms wrapped securely around her waist, holding her tight against him. Neither one paid any attention to him, so absorbed in each other were they. Connor couldn't help but smile as he backed away, leaving the pair. _About time those two got together. Ooh, wait until I tell Abby!_ he thought gleefully, hurrying towards the door.

* * *

The sound of the door closing made Cutter's head snap up, drawing away from her warm lips; Jenny let out a soft sound of protest, fingers stroking the soft hair at the back of his neck. "What was that?" he muttered.

"Nothing, it was probably just the wind," she replied, trying to coax him back towards her, hungry for the feel of his warm lips on hers again.

"Needy, needy," he said with a grin. He nuzzled at her throat, kissing and nibbling the soft tender flesh, and Jenny giggled softly when his stubble tickled against her skin. "I feel like I'm back in secondary, hoping I don't get caught by the crotchety old gym teacher," he mumbled, and she outright laughed into his shoulder, the sound a bright peal of bells that made him feel warm all the way down to his toes. _I have to make her laugh more often,_ he thought, drawing her a little closer.

* * *

"You're kidding me. Jenny and Cutter?" Abby couldn't quite mask the incredulity in her voice as she stared at him. She'd taken a shower and changed as well, now wearing a pair of sweatpants that sagged off her slender hips and a miles-too-big t-shirt that seemed to engulf her frame in folds of grey fabric.

Connor chuckled, barely resisting the urge to hop and down with delight. "Yeah. I saw it. Like bloody teenagers," he laughed. "They didn't even know I was there. Good thing, too, 'cause Cutter might've killed me if he saw."

"Yeah, probably," Abby agreed with a smile. She pushed a hand back through her damp white-blond hair, making it stand up in all directions. "Wow. Jenny and Cutter. Who the hell would've thought?" She smiled at him warmly, and he felt a warm fluttering feeling in his chest that happened whenever she looked at him like that. It just wasn't fair, sometimes, how she could be so utterly beautiful. He hadn't given up on the idea of them being more than mates, but he had put the idea way on the back burner, seeing as how she was so content with being just mates...though he was starting to believe maybe that was changing. She'd never been too affectionate around him, but all when he was sick she'd coddled him and snuggled him like...dare he say it...he was her boyfriend instead of just her flatmate.

"Uhm, Abby..." he began, trying to think of a way to talk to her without sounding like a total git.

Before he could get another word out, though, the door swung open and Stephen walked in, barefoot and shirtless, wearing only a pair of sweatpants, light brown hair slicked down and a shade darker with water. Connor felt his hopes die out as Abby raked her gaze over the other man's form with an appreciative eye, and he tried not to let it show on his face. "Oi, Hart, maybe you wanna put some actual clothes on? There's children about," Abby sniped, though the smile playing at her lips belied her words.

Stephen only smirked. "Seventeen is hardly a child," he replied, referring to Thomas and Jamie, the youngest of them. "And don't act like you don't appreciate the view."

"Yeah, whatever," she shot back playfully, and his easy smirk widened as he crossed the room and headed out the door. Abby shook her head and brushed back her hair. Suddenly, she seemed to remember that Connor was still there and turned back to him. "What were you gonna say, Conn?" she asked.

"Nothin'," he mumbled, trying not to sound as miserable as he felt. He couldn't say that he'd be surprised if Abby and Stephen fancied each other. They were practically made for each other, the both of them strong, attractive, brave...everything that he wasn't. Surprised, no. Hurt, yes. Connor got to his feet, keeping his gaze towards the floor.

"Connor..." Abby started.

"We ought to get back with the others," he suggested quietly and headed towards the door before she could say anything else. No point in rubbing salt in the wound.

* * *

Watching him slip out the door, Abby lifted a hand to her mouth and absently began biting at her nails. It was a nervous habit of hers, one she hardly ever did anymore; she'd grown out of it when she was ten. She didn't understand why it was so hard to talk to him. He was probably her closest friend in the world, yet she couldn't manage to pluck up the courage to say she liked him as more than just a friend.

Part of the distance between them, she knew, was her own doing. She'd always cut down Connor's flirtatious little advance towards her in the past, sometimes a tad harshly, and at times she'd bordered on being downright cruel to him without intending to. Now he was just settling for whatever little bits of affection she gave him and not pushing any further than that.

She pushed a hand back through her hair once more, biting her lip. Great. What a right proper mess she'd made of things. Getting to her feet, she headed out the door, walking the same direction Connor had gone. Hopefully she'd be able to soon fix this.


	22. Excuses

**A/N: I know it's been awhile, and I apologise for that. But I think I've finally figured out where I want this story to go, so things should go a little smoother from here on out.**

* * *

By the time Abby managed to catch up to Connor, he was already engrossed in conversation with Thomas, explaining how the handheld detector worked, their words slipping into terms so technical it almost sounded like another language. Huffing in frustration, she folded both arms over her stomach and leant back against the counter along the far wall. On the other side of the room, the others were all in deep conversation, but she had no interest in joining in.

"Something wrong?" asked Jamie, her younger doppelgänger somehow appearing beside her. She followed Abby's gaze to the boys and crossed her own arms, unknowingly adopting a mirroring position. "Did you and Connor have a fight?"

"No, nothing like that," Abby replied quietly. She wasn't one to share her personal life with anyone, but if there was anybody that she could talk to, it'd be another version of herself, right? Glancing down at the slightly younger woman, she asked, "Jamie, are you and Tom-Tom...together?"

Jamie lifted her fair eyebrows in surprise at the sudden question. "Me and Tom-Tom? I-I dunno." She reached up and twisted one short braid around her fingers for a moment, frowning slightly as she contemplated the unusual relationship she shared with the young genius. "I mean, yeah, I like him, and he likes me, but...to be honest, I have no idea what goes on inside his mind. He sees things so _differently_ than everyone else."

Abby tilted her head like a puzzled bird. "How do you mean?"

"He's got autism. Asperger's syndrome, it's called, though his isn't so bad. It's what makes him think about things differently than normal people do. He doesn't always see things the way you or I would," Jamie explained. "Sometimes, on his off days, he can say things so complicated that even I've got no clue what in the world he's trying to get across. He says that some days he feels like everything's gone black-and-white and he can't find the right words he needs to talk to other people." She tugged on one of her braids with a huff, trying to find a way to explain why her relationship with Thomas was so complicated. It was hard to put into words, especially when explaining it to someone that didn't already know Thomas as well as she did. "I dunno how it works, I just know that he can't always make sense of normal things. So I don't really know what we are. I would call him my boyfriend, but I'm not sure if he'd think of me the same way."

The older blond contemplated that in silence for a few moments, mulling over Jamie's words with fascination. Autism did explain Thomas's many different eccentricities, and now that she thought about it, Connor was much the same way. Cutter himself had once described the affable student as being an idiot savant. Maybe the professor wasn't that far off the mark... She frowned slightly, feeling a twist in her chest as she recalled all the times the team, including herself, had made fun of him, both to his face and behind his back.

Jamie leveled a curious, searching gaze at her alternate self. "Do you like Connor?" she asked.

"What? No," Abby answered reflexively, then paused. "Well... To be honest, I dunno either. I mean, I know that I like him, but...it's complicated."

The college student frowned, brows knitting together. "How's it complicated? I know he likes you, I can tell just by lookin' at him. And if you like him back, then what's the problem? Just tell him," she prompted. Abby opened her mouth to argue, but the girl held up a hand. "And before you say there's more than that, I think you're just sayin' that 'cause you're scared of how much you like him. I know Tom-Tom and me are complicated, but he once held a twenty-minute conversation with a stuffed animal and doesn't trust peaches because he thinks they're a kind of fuzzy apple created by scientists playing around with genetic altercation, so I've at least got a logical excuse. You being a big ninny is not an excuse," she finished with hands on her hips, staring at her doppelgänger.

Abby closed her mouth, unable to think up any kind of response. Damn it, Jamie had a point. It was only complicated because she was making it that way; it certainly wasn't complicated to Connor. "I guess you're right," she mumbled reluctantly.

"I know I'm right," Jamie replied. "Now quit being chicken and talk to him."

"I will, I will."

Claudia walked over to the two of them. "Jamie, we're going home, so grab your stuff," she said.

"Alright, Aunt Claudia." She snatched up her jacket and crossed the room to where Connor and Thomas were still talking in their foreign techno-language. "I'll see you tomorrow, Tom-Tom," she said, holding out both arms, and the young man hugged her tightly, lifting her off her feet for a moment before setting her back down. She tousled his hair playfully before leaving the room with Alex and Claudia; she tossed Abby a pointed look as the door closed behind her.

"The rest of us ought to be going, too," announced Lilian. "We're going to have a lot of work to do the next couple days, so let's all make sure we get our beauty sleep, yeah?"

Damien Beckett threw a sharp salute in her direction. "Yes, ma'am, boss-lady, ma'am," he replied.

The dark-haired woman rolled her eyes.


	23. Alternates

Stephen was starting to wonder when he was going to have to call for a straightjacket. It seemed that his life truly had gone mad. Dinosaurs and holes in time were one thing, but this, an alternate universe full of different versions of themselves? It was something out of a bad sci-fi novel, in all honesty. Part of him was curious though. He wondered what Lester did in this life, if he was still an insufferable know-it-all government hatchet man. A smile pulled at his lips, wondering if perhaps their indomitable boss was something mundane. Wouldn't _that_ be an amusing sight?

"Something funny?" asked Lilian's starting-to-become familiar vioce, and he glanced up to see the lady copper leaning against the kitchen counter. They had returned to her house after the 'team meeting' had disbanded, each of them heading back to their own homes. Well, except for Stephen and his own teammates. They were still crashing in her place.

"In our universe, we have this boss, bloke named Lester," Stephen replied, "and he is the biggest, most sarcastic, most irritating arse I have ever met. I was just thinking...how funny would it be if in this world he's completely different from the Lester I know? What if he's something normal, like a bookkeeper or an accountant? Mighty big step down, don't you think?"

The dark-haired woman let out a chortle, shaking her head. "Yeah, I s'pose that would be pretty funny," she agreed.

Stephen glanced up at the beautiful lady copper. She was the woman that he had thought he loved when he and Helen had been in their affair. Except there was nothing brittle or false about her attitude, it was real. That was just how Lilian was, that was her entire demeanor. "So, Lilian," he began.

"So, Stephen," she echoed.

He gave a snort. "When you arrested me, you called me Niles Talbot. Is that…the other me?" he wondered, and she nodded. "What's he like, then? I'm curious."

Lilian paused slightly at that, pushing a hand back through her dark hair, sweeping it back out of her face. "He's an addict," she answered; Stephen's chest tightened slightly. "Heroin, not cocaine. He's got a rap sheet as long as my arm. Possession. Possession with intent to sell. Under the influence. Breaking and entering. Theft. I've arrested him so many times he knows every copper in my division by name, and Tom-Tom, too. He manages to weasel his way out of the charges every time. Beats the hell out of me, but he does. Courts sent to rehab twice, but it hasn't done a damn thing for him. Bloke like Talbot, he's…he can't be helped just because we all want it. He is the kind of person that has to help himself before he can get anywhere," she said.

Stephen sat back in his chair with a sigh, running a hand back through his hair, ruffling the thick strands; he'd need a trim soon. _Well, that just tears it,_ he thought.

* * *

Claudia and Jamie were so engrossed in excited conversation, they barely seemed to realise they were home. Alex didn't mind the birdlike sound of their voices, mainly because he himself felt giddy with excitement. He'd just seen a _dinosaur_, for God's sake. A real, living, breathing dinosaur, right in the heart of London. The dark-haired woman that looked like Claudia—wasn't her name Jenny?—had led them through the beautiful shimmering light she called an anomaly, and he had seen an ancient prehistoric landscape. He was so full of buzzing happiness (it was a _dinosaur)_ that he almost didn't notice it.

"Claudia," he murmured slightly, putting out one arm to stop his fiancé and niece. When they looked at him in confusion, he pointed; the door of their flat was slightly ajar, and he distinctly remembered having closed and locked it before leaving. They both paused, staring at the slightly open door. "Stay here," he said quietly before cautiously approaching the flat, pushing open the door with his foot, fists clenched. As he stepped inside, looking for any sign of an intruder, he noticed that nothing looked out of place or disturbed; everything still looked the same as it did when they'd left, really. He reached out and flicked on the kitchen lights. "Oh, hell," he muttered.

Sitting on the kitchen floor was Niles Talbot, looking like something what crawled out of the gutter, gaunt and pale-faced. The sudden light made him screw his eyes closed and turn his head away from the glare like any nocturnal creature bathed in unwanted illumination. He turned his head towards Alex, and a weak smile pulled at his pale lips. "Hey there, big brother," he said hoarsely.


	24. Brothers

Alex sighed heavily. "You can come in, girls, it's alright," he called; Jamie and Claudia edged into the flat, still looking uneasy. When they spotted Niles sitting on the floor of the kitchen, a look of sad resignation came over their faces. "Jamie, it's late. Why don't you head up to bed?" he asked, the tone of his voice making it clear that it wasn't a suggestion. His niece cast him a silent _look,_ then obediently headed up the stairs to her room. He looked up and met Claudia's gaze for a moment; she nodded and headed down the hallway to their room, leaving them alone. "What the hell are you doing back here, Niles?" he growled, crouching down beside the other man.

"Good to see you too, Alex," Niles answered, reaching up to rub at his eyes. He gave a shiver, pushed one hand up his jacket sleeve, and scratched at his forearms. He was still shivering, even though it was warm in the flat, but it wasn't the cold shakes. He wore a battered leather jacket, a stained, faded grey t-shirt, and ratty-looking sweatpants, both sneakers well-scuffed and dirtied. His hair, a darker shade of blond than Alex's, was matted against his head like it hadn't been washed in a week—for all he knew, it could've been that long since Niles last saw a shower. He looked up at Alex once more with bloodshot, glassy eyes. "Got any coffee?"

He let out an irritated huff. "No, but we do have orange juice. I doubt caffeine would do you any good," he answered, straightening up. Alex stepped over his brother's legs and opened a cabinet, taking down a glass. As Niles managed to pull himself to his feet, he filled the glass with cold orange juice and set it in front of the other man. "How the hell did you get into my flat?" he demanded.

Niles wrapped both hands around the cold glass. "You changed the locks," he mumbled quietly.

"Yeah, I know, that's why I'm asking," Alex snapped back.

His brother cast him a baleful look, but Alex didn't waver. He and Niles had gone their separate ways a long time before Alex first started working in the Home Office, when he had gone back to their mother's maiden name instead of using their stepfather's name of Talbot. Somehow seeing his brother now was worse after seeing Stephen, because whenever he looked at Stephen, he saw the man that his brother could and should have been.

After a moment, he clenched his fists on the counter in realisation. "You broke in, didn't you? Damn it, Niles…."

"I didn't have anywhere else to go," he protested.

"And whose fault is _that?"_ Alex forcibly reined in his temper, though he really wanted to haul back and punch his brother in the jaw hard enough to loosen some teeth; maybe that would finally knock some sense into him. "Maybe if you actually put your money into rent payments instead of your next fix, you'd have a flat of your own to go back to," he growled out; Niles flinched under the harshness of his words, but Alex didn't feel much regret. After staring at his sibling for a moment, he took in how thin and gaunt the other man looked. "When's the last time you ate?"

"I-I dunno."

Alex pulled open the fridge, took out a container of leftover Thai from the other night, and set it on the counter. "You can have that, but then you need to leave," he said sharply.

"Leave?" Niles repeated softly.

"Yes, leave. You're not staying here anymore."

The battered-looking man shook his head, breath trembling. "I-I don't want to do this anymore, Alex. Please, help me." His blue eyes, a slightly darker colour than his elder brother's, shone with suspicious dampness as he shifted his weight. "Please, big brother. Help me."

The sound of Niles's voice, so miserable and pathetic, tore at something Alex had tried to bury a long time ago, but he still clenched his fists on the countertop. "No. Every time I have ever tried helping you, you just disappoint me. I-I let you stay on my couch, and the next morning I wake up, my wallet's cleaned out. No, Niles. You want help? This time, you have to help yourself," he ground out, shaking his head.

"I-I can't. I'm not like you, Alex, I—" He paused and swallowed hard. "I can't."

"You could if you tried. That's the thing about you, Niles. You never try." Alex pushed a hand back through his hair with a heavy sigh. "You act like the whole bloody world is against you, but I think you've forgotten, little brother, that I came from the same place you did. Frank beat the hell out of me as much as he did you. I went to school with black eyes, same as you. When Mum was off her meds and there was no food in the house, I didn't eat, either. And that's the big difference between you and me. I _tried_. I worked my arse off to get out of that hellhole. You chose not to. I got out. You didn't. Not because you couldn't, but because you didn't try to. Niles, if you want help, you are going to have to help yourself this time," he said firmly. "So, I'll say it again. Leave. Get out of my flat and leave my family alone."

"I am your family…."

"You were, until you decided that you cared more about something that comes out of a needle more than you cared about us," he hissed back. "You can be part of my family again when you figure out what's more important to you—us or killing yourself with that needle in your arm. Out. Go on. Get out. Out!"

Niles stood there trembling for a moment, staring at him, but then he seized the container of leftover food and nearly ran from the flat, his footsteps fading down the corridor, down the steps. Alex shut the door, switched the bolt, and slid the security chain; he turned, slumping back against the door and sliding down to sit on the floor. A heartbeat later, Claudia came out of their room. She didn't say a word, just sat beside him and put an arm around his shoulders in silent comfort.

* * *

**A/N: that turned out a little grittier than expected, but I felt that I hadn't really given much of a backstory to Alex and Niles or shown how Niles really ties in with the rest of them. I tried to correct that and it got a little intense. Hits a little close to home, too; a few of my family members struggle with addiction themselves. But that's neither here nor there.**

**As always, please review. Reviews help feed the muse.**


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